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RECENT BORZOI NOVELS 


THREE PILGRIMS AND A TINKER 

MARY BORDEN 

THE TATTOOED COUNTESS 

CARL VAN VECHTEN 

THE ETERNAL HUNTRESS 

RAYNER SEELIG 

THE FIRE IN THE FLINT 

WALTER F. WHITE 

THE LORD OF THE SEA 

M . P . S H I E L 

BALI SAND 

JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER 

SOUND AND FURY 

JAMES HENLE 

TREASURE TRAIL 

ROLAND PERTWEE 

'WINGS 

ETHEL M. KELLEY 


ORDEAL 

DALE COLLINS 



JA (jzu York • I9 2 4 

ALFRED • A • KNOPF 






COPYRIGHT, I923, 1924, BY MILDRED CRAM * PUB¬ 
LISHED, OCTOBER, I924. * SET UP, ELECTROTYPED 
AND PRINTED BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, 
RAHWAY, N. J. * ESPARTO PAPER MANUFACTURED 
IN SCOTLAND AND FURNISHED BY W. F. ETHERING- 
TON & CO., NEW YORK. * BOUND BY THE H. WOLFF 


ESTATE, NEW YORK, N. Y, 






MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


NOV 10 *24 / 

©C1AS07740 - 






TO MY HUSBAND 












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I 


1 ILAH closed the door of the apartment and 
walked slowly across the living-room to the 
window, removing her black hat and the chiffon 
veil which had about it an unpleasant and penetrating 
odor of mourning. The silence was good. To be rid 
of all those people, those eyes, trying to gauge her 
grief, to measure it, as if it were soluble! Tears! 
Suppose she hadn’t shed enough? Then they would 
have said that she had not loved her father. . . . 
Well, she had. 

Now she could do as she pleased about everything. 
She turned her back to the window and with quick, 
critical eyes appraised the room her father had liked 
to call the “library.” He had brought his books and 
possessions from Ohio to New York when he accepted 
the professorship at Columbia. “No, my dear, we 
mustn’t leave this, or this—these things are very pre¬ 
cious to me. They are—sanctified.” 

Sanctified! A little burst of laughter shook Lilah. 
She wanted to sweep everything into a great heap and 
set a match to it; to make a bonfire of sanctified ugli¬ 
ness. 

She felt very young and invincible as she stood there 
with her back to the window. She had asked to be 
alone because she was afraid of the exuberance that 
had taken possession of her on the way back from 

i 


2 


THE TIDE 

the cemetery. Everything had looked so fresh, so gay, 
so desirable—streets, houses, little flocks of sparrows, 
people passing with disinterested glances at the long 
procession of funeral hacks. She had wanted to jump 
out and walk. But she had kept her handkerchief over 
her face to hide the upward curving of her lips, the look 
she knew must be there of eagerness. She had gone 
through the business of burying her father famously, 
had made all the conventional gestures. Something 
within her had said: “I am free. This is the beginning 
for me.” 

She was sorry that she had pitied her father. She 
would have preferred to admire him. He had never 
understood, as she understood, life or men. A failure, 
he had capitalized his defeat. She had seen through 
him—his artful gentleness, his calculated patience, his 
martyrdom. He never complained, but his eyes looked 
out at you like a startled deer; you had a feeling that 
you had hurt him in some way. He was forever turn¬ 
ing the other cheek, accepting reverses and disappoint¬ 
ments with enthusiasm, as saints have worn and re¬ 
joiced in hair shirts. 

Lilah thought: “Did I love him? Of course I did. 
Old hypocrite! I shouldn’t. He lived his own life 
and never gave a thought to mine. And he has left me 
penniless. He made me love beautiful things and Fve 
got to shift for myself in order to get them. But I 
loved him.” 

She remembered his hands, large, hairy hands with 
freckles, that had groped for hers in those last, ter¬ 
rified moments of wavering. And her heart contracted 


THE TIDE 


3 

with a deep pity, a shame, a pervading loneliness. She 
began to cry. . . . 

She would save the books, of course. They were 
valuable. Her father, who had been a gluttonous 
reader, had had excellent taste. Most of his salary 
had gone into first editions—that rare Aretino, the 
Baudelaire, the exquisite copy of Vasari’s “Vita di 
Leonardo da Vinci.” All the book clerks in the city 
had gone to the funeral. He had belonged to that 
rare genus, the veritable connoisseur. 

“Your father was a wonderful man, Miss Norris. 
Wonderful. I’ll always remember him prowling up 
and down between the shelves, peering and question¬ 
ing. He knew how to handle books! He never 
broke their backs!” 

Wiping the tears away, Lilah went into her bed¬ 
room. She hated herself in black; she was too blonde 
and too slender. She decided, leaning forward to 
stare at herself in the dressing-table mirror, that she 
was positively plain . . . And she made a little face 
at herself. She undressed slowly, slipping out of the 
black dress she had bought for the funeral. Then, 
sitting on the edge of the bed in her underthings, she 
took stock of herself. She could still see herself in 
the mirror, rather blurred by the dim light, but charm¬ 
ing, not plain now that the black was gone and her 
eyes were free of tears. She was one of those women 
who take a serious pleasure in regarding themselves; 
she was never unconscious of her cleverly modeled 
face, the misty quality of her loveliness. And be¬ 
cause of this preoccupation, her expression was watch- 


4 THE TIDE 

ful, with something petulant in the droop of her mouth. 
She was small and compact; she had the broad shoul¬ 
ders and meager hips of a boy. Her hands were too 
large but she had inherited her mother’s pointed and 
lustrous nails and a certain fineness, almost an ele¬ 
gance of gesture. She was strong but indolent; she 
disliked fussy, unsteady people. 

She turned her head and gravely studied another 
angle of her face; she had always taken a peculiar 
delight in the possession of her own nose; its blunt, 
deft outlines were modern, audacious, “funny.” How 
lucky not to be aquiline, or worse, Roman! It was 
part of her good fortune to have been born in physi¬ 
cal key with her period. She would have been con¬ 
sidered ugly in the sixteenth, the eighteenth cen¬ 
turies; in the twentieth, she was delightful because 
her features were irregular and provocative. 

She thought again: “I am alone.” 

All young lives, she reflected, must begin, be founded 
upon, the death of some one already old. From the 
stale and disillusioned, such soaring as hers! For 
she meant to soar. Change, decline, a difference in 
her delicious outline, were remote and unimaginable 
calamities. She remembered, with a shudder, her 
father’s last year. He had seemed to surrender too 
easily to the little habits of senility—he had not been 
always—quite nice. Why were old people so pa¬ 
thetic, so remote, so unaware of their lack of grace? 

Now, she knew, she was glad that it was over. She 
could be free of that breathless pity, that impatience 
which had bordered on disgust and had hurt her so— 


THE TIDE 


5 


She jumped up and went back to the library. 

Her father’s chair was drawn up beside the table, 
so that the light from the lamp might fall across his 
open book. He had been reading Emerson. Not 
Nietzsche, at the end. He had said, with one of his 
smiles, that as he drew nearer to the devil he sought 
a better acquaintance with God. 

Lilah wondered whether he had found God; 
whether, after that frantic struggle not to die, he had 
come upon green hills and clouds white as snow. She 
smiled at the thought of him, reading “Essays in 
Pessimism” and neglecting his harp, or his pitch 
fork. Perhaps he had sought acquaintance with God 
too late, as she herself was sure to. 

She sat down in the old chair and contemplated 
her slippers, her ankles, her legs. Pretty enough 
legs. She might try the stage. It was an amusing 
thought, and while it lasted, she saw herself, very 
much blonder, wearing one of those soubrette cos¬ 
tumes with a bouffant skirt and a “plate” hat tied 
under her chin. . . . 

The idea trailed off. 

When the telephone rang, she hesitated. It might 
be Aunt Jo—one of the relatives, who had made this 
pilgrimage to New York with the gusto of the con¬ 
firmed funeral enthusiast. Or it might be David, 
who had made her grief an excuse for offering his 
shoulder again. 

On the chance that it might be Robert Peabody, 
she answered. 


6 


THE TIDE 

His voice, with that peculiar hesitation, said: Miss 
Norris ?” 

He wanted to see her. He had only just heard. 
Might he come? Of course! To-night. ... She 
was alone and unhappy, depressed. He could 
imagine. . . . 

“Eight o’clock, then.” 

She put the instrument down and ran into her bed¬ 
room, her spirits flying again, like a whir of swift 
birds across a sunset sky. The window was open, 
and, bare-armed, she leaned on the sill, watching the 
tide in the street, people hurrying home, with bundles, 
with newspapers, with twisted cornucopias full of 
flowers. The sky was slate blue and the street a 
deep canon full of purple shadows. All the ugliness 
was erased; the cornices had a sort of beauty. A 
tall apartment house over on the Avenue rose like a 
tower, a shaft of white stone set with lights and 
crowned with wisps of steam, purple-blue plumes in a 
giant’s cap. The murmur of the city rose, confused, 
a vast grumble. She thought again of her father, 
lying out there beneath a heap of flowers, and of her¬ 
self, here, alive, with everything unfolding. . . . 

He had always said that he had given his life to her. 
What he had really given her was a dubious inherit¬ 
ance. She had all of his impatience, his detestation 
of the crude or the banal. 

He had taken her with him on his annual vacations 
in Europe, meager excursions to Switzerland and Italy. 
Lilah summered in innumerable, obscure pensions. 
She wore crepe waists that “did up” without ironing 


THE TIDE 


7 

and comfortable German-Swiss shoes with hob-nails, 
and tramped through the Alpine valleys carrying a 
stick and a knapsack. Her quick eyes saw everything, 
took things in, assorted, rejected, accepted. She spoke 
French and Italian with a pert accent, and while her 
father sought out and worried his intellectual bones 
she absorbed the European Blue Book. 

Beyond the redolent pensions with their grottoed 
gardens and dingy dining-rooms, there were the Grands 
Hotels d’Europe, emblazoned concierges and pares 
equipped with statuary and pavilions. And beyond 
the hotels, a sacred circle of chateaux and villine shel¬ 
tering the lives of people whose very names stirred in 
her a melancholy envy. She had never thought her¬ 
self socially inferior; she had the peculiar pride of the 
pedagogical aristocracy; she was, moreover, American 
in her assumption of equality. But she could not be 
patient, she could not accept what she knew to be a 
surrender to mediocrity. 

In the meantime, several men fell in love with her 
—a Swedish pianist with a bang and long finger-nails, 
an Italian cavalry officer and an English engineer who 
wanted her to go with him to South Africa. She knew, 
before she was twenty, the depth and the danger of 
passion. A man had groveled at her feet, begging 
for something she could not feel. She had known 
disgust and terror; afterwards, an exultation. She 
seemed to have a certain persuasion. Realizing it, 
she cultivated her charm, what men called her “mys¬ 
tery.” Part artifice, part instinct, this charm of hers 
was deepened, made permanent, during those summers 


8 THE TIDE 

in Europe. She was feminine and adroit. She knew 
that, given the right soil, she might cultivate a very 
rare garden indeed. 

Now this . . . 

She closed the window and began to dress. Black 
again, she supposed. Robert Peabody was conven¬ 
tional enough to question grief in orchid chiffon; he 
would expect pallor—and pearls. Her own string was 
imitation and she threw it down again. The tele¬ 
phone was ringing . . . David. . . . She crinkled 
her nose at herself in the mirror. Let him ring! He 
was one of those dumb, worshipful creatures made 
more ardent by rebuffs. He would ring to-morrow, 
and the next day, and the next, until she answered. 
Nothing must interfere with her seeing Robert Pea¬ 
body alone. 

The bell stopped with a querulous note of surren¬ 
der, and she went about the library, straightening 
the chairs, pushing the ugliest ornaments out of sight. 
She moved quickly, conscious of an unpleasant sensa¬ 
tion of fear. Her father seemed to be there, watch¬ 
ing her, mournful and beseeching, with those eyes of 
a dog or a wounded deer. She felt that she had done 
something unfair; that she might, she might have held 
him on this side a little longer—if she had resisted 
whatever it was that was pulling him down and away! 
How horrible! Death should never come near the 
living. It was unkind. Even to know— 

She had put a silk scarf over her shoulders. The 
fringed ends touched the floor; with one hand she 


THE TIDE 


9 

held the heavy folds across her hips so that the grace 
of her figure was visible. 

When the door bell rang—it was one of the push¬ 
button variety—she waited a moment before answer¬ 
ing, an artistic interval intended to stir a doubt in 
Peabody’s mind and then to reassure him so that he 
would mount the four flights of carpeted stairs with 
a sense of victory, of security. 

While he climbed, she leaned over the banister. 
She could see his blond head with the neat parting, 
his black and white muffler, a gloved hand on the rail¬ 
ing. . . . The ghost in the room behind her drifted 
out of the window, back to the pyramid of flowers. 

She thought: “He has never been here before. He’ll 
hate the room.” 

But Robert Peabody seemed only to see her. His 
light eyes, not quick like her own, but steady and 
almost expressionless, stared at her as he took her 
hand: “I was so sorry to hear—so awfully sorry for 
you.” 

Lilah’s lips trembled. She led him back to the 
library and took from him the heavy overcoat, the 
silk muffler, his hat and gloves. The feel of them 
pleased her; they were so exactly right in texture. 

“I’ve been at the Point,” he said, taking her father’s 
chair. “I never see a paper there. Gillow told me 
when I got back this morning.” He hesitated. “I 
liked your father.” 

“Every one did,” Lilah said. 

“I know. I dare say he was better than most 
of us.” 


10 


THE TIDE 


“He was.” 

“See here. I wish you wouldn’t cry! When people 
die, it’s a confounded shame to talk about their good 
qualities. I’m a fool. I didn’t mean to do what 
every one else does. I meant to cheer you up a bit. 

. . . Are you alone?” 

Lilah wiped her eyes. “Yes. I sent the relatives 
away. They enjoyed it too much.” 

He laughed. “Sensible of you! What can I talk 
to you about? Dogs? People? Gardens?” 

“Yourself,” Lilah answered. “I’m curious about 
you.” 

This was obvious, but he was not the sort to be 
alarmed. 

“Your father must have told you,” he said. And 
to her surprise he flushed. “I was his worst pupil. 
I flunked everything. I’m terribly stupid.” 

“I don’t believe that.” 

“But I am. I wouldn’t be anywhere to-day if it 
weren’t for my grandfather. He created the family, 
and he still runs it. Funny thing—he had all the 
creative instinct. He saw the possibilities in lumber 
sixty years ago. He saw, and, he dared. Magnifi¬ 
cent old chap! He outlived my father. I dare say 
he’ll outlive me.” 

“Hardly.” 

“Eighty-four. Thin as a leaf and hard as steel! 
I’m third generation. And drinkin’.” 

“Why?” 

“What else is there to do? My grandfather had 
all the fun. He broke the ground and planted the 


II 


THE TIDE 

seed. Now the trees are up—if I can put it that way 
—and there’s nothing for me to do but sit in the 
shade. . . . Sometimes I envy him.” 

Lilah glanced down at her slippers. “You shouldn’t. 
He gives you everything.” 

“And laughs at me! Because I’m soft. And thick- 
pated. He couldn’t hate me any more than I hate 
myself. My God, Miss Norris, to be as rich as I am 
and to look like an English governess. . . . Now, 
don t I? Honest? You ought to see my knees— 
they’re as pink as a baby’s! Look at my hands! 
And this hair—it parts like that, neat, in the middle! 
Great God!” He stared at her. “So I’m drinkin’.” 

“You don’t blame your grandfather for your knees, 
do you?” 

“Of course I do.” He slid forward and offered his 
cigarette case. “Smoke?” 

Lilah thought quickly: “Do I, or don’t I?” 

She decided: “Yes.” 

And leaning to the match he lighted, she puffed 
delicately, with quick little intakes of breath. The 
smoke came through her nostrils. She tipped her 
head back and let Peabody see the firm line of her 
throat, her chin, round and feminine. 

“I made you laugh, didn’t I? I wanted to.” His 
expression changed, and she saw again that bland, 
sympathetic look, an intensification, as if he were 
trying to focus on his emotion. He had no complexi¬ 
ties of feeling; he seemed to grope for the most simple 
reaction. It was, Lilah thought, like one of those 
“slowed-up” pictures in the movies. You saw his 


I2 THE TIDE 

mood change as you watched him. She could antici¬ 
pate the conclusion before he was aware of it himself. 
Was he going to bore her too much? Her mind was 
not always accurate but it was quick as lightning. 
She saw—pounced—judged. She lay back in her 
chair watching this man whose path had crossed hers 
only twice, once in Europe, and again at a dinner given 
in honor of her father. He was the only rich man 
she knew. The satellites that had revolved about her 
in her pension days had been on the lookout for the 
traditional American heiress; she had no dot, and 
therefore no claim to their serious attention. She 
knew this. And her attitude toward men had been 
unconsciously established; she believed that she could 
not advance without a compromise. She took it for 
granted that she would have to forego love. She was 
too ironical to consider the possibility of a lovable 
Robert Peabody. 

“See here,” he said. The match burned out be¬ 
tween his fingers and he tossed it into the grate. “I 
have a suggestion. . . . You ought not to stay here 
alone. Suppose you let me take you back to the 
Point? My grandfather’s there. He’d love you. 
And there’s my Aunt Whiteside, who’s a sort of house¬ 
keeper. It would do you good. What do you say?” 

Lilah shook her head. “No.” 

“Why not?” 

She stood up, flicking the ashes into the hearth, 
with a gesture she had perhaps copied from some one 
—it was not insolent, but it was very “Russian.” She 
was picturesque, standing there, the lamplight on the 


THE TIDE 


i3 

curious silver-gold of her hair, which she wore straight 
back from her forehead. She had about her that pe¬ 
culiar and elusive element of elegance which is usually 
the patina, unmistakable, of wealth. There was no 
trace of her rather shoddy experience in either her 
carriage or her attitude. She was not arrogant. She 
was assured. And this was her most valuable asset. 

She shook her head again. “I can’t. I’m penni¬ 
less. I’ve got to do something.” 

Robert Peabody stared at his hands as if they of¬ 
fended him. “I’m sorry. Terribly sorry. That’s 
rotten luck.” 

The rich can be magnificently casual about money. 
It was rotten luck! But to people like the Peabodys, 
financial calamity is too remote to be classed among 
the realities of life. 

Lilah, glancing down at the neat part in Robert 
Peabody’s hair, knew that she had made a misstep. 

“It’s all right,” she said lightly. “I’ll manage.” 

“Of course you will! Only I’d hoped that you’d 
come. It would be jolly for my grandfather. And 
for me.” 

It would have been jolly for her, if she could have 
afforded it. How could she tell Robert Peabody that 
she had only the one dress, and nothing for evening? 
If she had been a personality, some one established, 
a woman of importance, it would not have mattered. 
A great woman needs only her wits and her name. 
But Lilah was nobody. Twenty-seven years old, and 
nobody. She felt that her potentiality had been 
walled in. Her father had had a streak of something 


14 


THE TIDE 

common in his nature; he had preferred mediocre 
people. He was always giving money to blatant, 
down-at-the-heel sycophants whom he suspected of 
talent or spiritual loveliness. He lent a sympathetic 
ear to tales of degradation. There was something 
coarse in him—a streak aslant the pure crystal of his 
intellect. His friends had called him a humanitarian; 
to Lilah, his passion for derelicts meant a lack of fas¬ 
tidiousness. She wanted him to be an epicurean, he 
had ended by being a pathetic Nietzschan bleating 
for God. . . . 

Oh, to get away ... to forget, in the freshness of 
the country in May, the stale odor of crepe and wilted 
carnations. . . . 

“You ought to see the Point, Miss Norris. Some 
day, you must. I was brought up there. I’m pretty 
much of a country chap. I’d like to show you the 
kennels. D’you like spaniels?’’ 

“Rather.” 

“I’ve got a new litter. Four of the prettiest little 
chaps. Smooth as silk with perfectly gorgeous ears.” 

He went on, talking about spaniels, leaning back in 
her father’s chair. 

She smiled. But her mind was busy making pic¬ 
tures of the Point; she was walking down a garden 
path paved with brick between rose hedges. The sun 
was warm on her back; she could feel it through the 
lace of her gown, and on her neck, where her leghorn 
hat turned up and you saw her hair twisted so 
smoothly, honey-colored. She was not with Robert 
but with his grandfather. There was a look between 


THE TIDE 15 

them of perfect understanding, something warm, mu¬ 
tual, delicious. And the sky was like a Canaletto, 
flecked with “mackerel,” gentian and crystal. She 
saw the chimneys of a house, and a sort of terrace 
where a cow grazed under some trees. . . . 

“The little chaps hadn’t opened their eyes.” 

“No?” she said. She came back out of the dream 
with a shiver of pleasure. Then one by one the de¬ 
tails of the room assailed her. This was hers. 

She twisted her shoulders and smiled. “Aren’t 
you hungry? I’ll make a rarebit.” 

Robert Peabody flushed again. “Will you?” 

She led the way to the kitchen, and, letting the silk 
scarf fall into Robert’s hands, she put on an apron. 
She was very expert and swift, lighting the gas stove, 
opening and shutting the ice-box, grating cheese, 
toasting crackers, stirring and measuring. She put 
Robert in a corner, where he sat with her scarf be¬ 
tween his hands, caressing the stuff, not as some men 
would have caressed it, with luxury, but with a sort 
of unconscious pleasure, as one strokes the silky ears^ 
of a dog. All the while he watched her. She had 
decided not to be ashamed of the way she lived; there 
was little or no use in pretending luxury. A medley 
of sounds rose from the court outside, and she closed 
the window. They were more alone in the silence. 
Their intimacy and their strangeness demanded words, 
but he said nothing, only watched, with emotions mak¬ 
ing their slow and obvious passage across his eyes. 
He found her fascinating and she puzzled him. She 
was practical, and pretty, a lady; you couldn’t be 


16 THE TIDE 

quite sure, these days; he might have a shot at a 
flirtation; he pitied her; he was a little afraid of her 
—but fascinating, by George. Damned attractive! * 

Something foreign about her. . . . And then the idea 
of love crossed his mind. While she was stirring the 
rarebit, she watched the beginning of that idea. His 
eyes were fixed on her hands and arms, from which 
the black sleeves fell back. His eyes clouded with 
the poignant onslaught of his conception—to love her, 
to be loved by her. Tremendous. A responsibility. 

His mouth betrayed, by a droop at the corners, his 
humility and discouragement. And his hands, touch¬ 
ing the silk fringes, began suddenly to caress them, 
gently. 

When she leaned across the table to pour the rare¬ 
bit, he bent quickly and kissed her arm. 

Lilah said: “Oh.” 

“Forgive me, there’s a dear! I didn’t mean to. I 
swear I didn’t.” 

“And you pretend to be stupid?” 

“But I am. That’s just it.” 

She shrugged. Her reaction was immediate and 
would have startled him had he known how swift 
and inexorable her judgments were. She had decided 
to make him suffer, and to land him full and fair in 
her net. This one, and no other! You will see that 
she was romantic; only a very sentimental woman en¬ 
joys making a man suffer. As a gauge of love the 
process is primitive, even savage. It meant simply 
that in that moment, so light, so brief, when he had 
put his lips to her arm, he had attracted her. 


THE TIDE 


i7 

“It’s a good rarebit/’ he said. “And it seems to 
me you’re awfully cozy here. Nice little flat. Every¬ 
thing comfortable.” 

“But I haven’t any money.” 

“Not literally?” 

“Quite. When the nurses and doctors are paid, I 
shan’t have anything.” 

She stifled a sudden depression. “I’ll do something. 
I can make hats!” 

He looked up from the rarebit. “I bet you can! 
I’ll tell Aunt Whiteside and the James girls. I know 
mobs of women. ...” 

He branched off into the eccentricities of his Aunt 
Whiteside’s hats. “Awful little bonnets with trees and 
crystal dew-dabs and strings—everything shakes and 
shivers—all of her hats have the palsy. But she pays 
like thunder for ’em. And the bills go to my grand¬ 
father. He always says: ‘The price of virtue’ when 
he writes the check. She’s sort of a mother superior 
in sequins. One day my grandfather said: ‘Robert, 
have you ever noticed Grace Whiteside’s legs?’ I’d 
never thought of such a thing! But the next 
day I looked, and by George, they were magnificent! 
Something terrible about it. . . . An old lady with 
legs. ...” 

“Go on,” Lilah said. 

But Robert shook his head. “I’m shockin’ you.” 

“No. I’ve known Italian men. They all talk like 
that, only, in Italian, it sounds like d’Annunzio: Le 
gambe belle di una vecchia donna. ...” 

They laughed. 


18 THE TIDE 

He had forgotten about her poverty again. 

Before he left, standing in the darkened hallway 
with his muffler on and eyes sympathetic again, he 
said: “I J m going to ask Grace Fuller to come around 
and see you. She’s looking for a room-mate. Splen¬ 
did girl. I’m rather sweet on her. You’d like her.” 

“Grace Fuller?” 

“She’s a nurse. Took care of me when I had my 
appendix. And she always sees Aunt Whiteside 
through the gall-stones.” 

He offered his hand. 

Lilah felt that, behind her, the ghost had drifted 
in again. “I’d be very glad,” she said faintly. 

“Now you cheer up.” His voice deepened a note. 
He was genuinely sorry for her. “Good night.” 

Lilah leaned against the closed door. . . . Tired. 
. . . Tired. . . . Grace Fuller. . . . Sweet on her. 
. . ( What a damned fool of a man! What a bore! 
Stupid! Stupid! To have had him here at all! To 
have tried . . . 

She ran to the window and leaned out. A motor 
moved away with a silvery clink of chains. It had 
been raining. ... He was gone. . . . The street 
lights were like balloons on sticks and an odor of wet 
dust rose, pungent, acrid. 

For a long time she leaned there, with dry eyes, 
her breath shallow. The day flowed back over her 
spirit and she saw herself, little, heartless, unsuccess¬ 
ful. She had better make up her mind to do with 
what she had. To accustom herself to such ugliness 
as this. 


II 


S HE had hoped for a little life-insurance; her 
father’s wail had been, whenever she wanted a 
new hat: “I can’t, my dear. I’ve got to pay 
the life-insurance—twenty dollars.” She had never 
questioned him; it had seemed unkind, but she knew 
that there was some sort of a policy. She went 
through his papers, vaguely excited. There were a few 
letters from some one who signed herself “Darling,” 
written in a spidery hand on blue paper. Lilah threw 
the package into the waste basket, unread. . . . His 
knife. His precious letter of recommendation from 
Hadley ... A note, long overdue, forgotten, out¬ 
lawed, hardly decipherable. ... A long envelope con¬ 
taining snap-shots of his dog, Nellie, the old setter. 
Lilah felt a penetrating pity—her father, laughing, in 
a corduroy coat, with Nellie tugging at a leash. Her 
father, on a jig-saw veranda, with his pipe, and 
Nellie scratching fleas behind him. . . . Nellie. . . . 
Nellie. . . . 

The policy was not there. She emptied the drawers 
of an accumulation of cherished trash, all faded, in¬ 
comprehensible. 

She was interrupted by a caller, a thin, waspish man 
who tried to be amiable, as if he expected, before the 
interview was over, to be thoroughly disagreeable. 

19 


20 THE TIDE 

“Miss Norris? I represent Bilton and Chiswick, 
agents for this apartment. We have heard of your 
misfortune. We would like to know whether you in¬ 
tend to occupy the premises now that you are—alone 
—or whether you prefer to sub-lease.” 

Lilah said impatiently: “I'll let you know.” 

He consulted a black book, very much thumbed. 
“Your lease expires in twenty days. Shall I prepare 
a new lease for the coming year? The rent, in all 
these apartments, has been raised. We are asking 
sixty-five a month for three rooms and bath.” 

“How on earth does he know,” Lilah wondered, 
“that I’m broke?” 

To shock him, she lighted a cigarette. 

He jumped up. “We expect an answer in the morn¬ 
ing. There’s a great demand for these apartments.” 

“Is there?” 

Lilah went with him to the door and shut him out 
with a bang. These agents had a mysterious money 
instinct—they could smell out poverty. Beasts! 

She went back to the library, suddenly conscious 
of the inestimable blessing of a roof. She had sixty 
dollars. The doctor could be put off. Doctors never 
expected to be paid at once. . . . The nurse, no. 
Then, where would she be? Why hadn’t her father 
taught her to do something. . . . She had forgotten 
the grocer’s bill, the milk, ice, gas, newspaper. . . . 

She would have to borrow. From whom? Not 
Aunt Jo. Nor her father’s cronies, the book clerks. 
Nor from any of the professors and assistants. Every 
one she knew was poor, struggling, limited. 


THE TIDE 


21 


She signed a new lease. The waspish man was sus¬ 
picious. He made a sucking sound with his tongue 
and snatched his fountain-pen back before Lilah had 
added the line and the two dots which usually orna¬ 
mented her large, flourishing signature. She had no 
idea how she was going to thwart his obvious inten¬ 
tion; he meant to evict her, bag and baggage, at the 
first opportunity. When he had gone, sucking his 
teeth all the way down stairs, Lilah telephoned David 
Brenner. He, at least, would know that coupons don’t J 
grow in geranium pots. 

He came, smiling in that way he had of cherish¬ 
ing a secret. 

“David, I’m frightened.” 

“Broke?” 

She emptied her purse on the table. “Forty-one, 
seventy-seven.” 

He shook his head. “I’m not sorry for you, Lilah. 
You’re looking into a mirror at what you think is life. 
And the mirror is a trick mirror—it enlarges, distorts 
everything. You see your poverty—colossal! You 
see your limitations—gigantic! You see your fear 
—enormous! And look here—look! The Truth! 
You’re a pretty little humbug. You can earn your 
living, only you’re afraid to.” 

“David, I thought you loved me.” 

“I do.” 

The young Jew had eyes that went around her. 
“I do. Only—between the sublime and the ridiculous 
there is the breadth of a hair.” 

“Am I ridiculous?” 


22 


THE TIDE 


“You are a little humbug,” he said stubbornly. 

“What can I do? I won’t cook. I won’t take care 
of babies. I won’t be a chorus girl.” 

“You’re too old.” 

“Old?” 

“Certainly. What else can you do?” 

“I can make hats.” 

Suddenly she raised her voice. “I hate poverty! 
It’s positively immoral.” 

“What a pretty speech! Wait until you know real 
poverty, as I have known it! Did I ever tell yo^—I 
escaped from Russia when I was sixteen? I stowed 
away from Vladivostok to San Francisco and lived 
like a rat for three years. Only then my name wasn’t 
Brenner—it was a mouthful! I don’t hate poverty. 
I hate the system which permits poverty. ...” 

Lilah interrupted. “I shan’t fail! I can get four 
with one and one-half. I’m quick. But I don’t like 
having to be quick. I prefer to wear chiffon and to 
walk in a garden. ...” 

His eyes softened “Poor Lilah.” 

“What shall I do?” 

“Work.” 

“You don’t,” she said sharply. 

But he would not part with his secret. Spreading 
out his hands, he shrugged, and let her believe any¬ 
thing. Suspected of having dodged the draft, David 
Brenner kept strange company, maintained an enig¬ 
matic silence and, like all morose and discontented in¬ 
tellectuals, appeared to be more important than he 


THE TIDE 


23 

was. He wore a cloak of vague disapproval. It was 
more an atmosphere than a militant conviction. He 
was not a fighter. There was something adolescent 
in his moody distraction, his hauteur, his indifference. 

“Lilah, I am an alley cat, pawing over garbage. I 
have come upon a glittering little fish, a fresh sardine 
—and that’s Lilah! I shall never be the same cat 
again. ... I shall always be looking for sardines. 
. . . Will you lunch with me?” 

She would. 

They went to a Greenwich Village restaurant. In 
certain moods, Lilah enjoyed such places. She liked 
to sit aloof and peep between her fingers at these 
pathological bohemians. She smoked, veiled her eyes, 
and let David Brenner hold her hand. The table was 
a patch-work of initials and dates, egoistic trade¬ 
marks. Lilah thought of Dante’s Tomb and the 
names scratched on the face of the Sphinx—little 
names, here and there, seen, gone . . . nothing . . . 

David Brenner was no better than Robert Peabody. 
(Men only wanted to kiss her. 

She left him and walked uptown, seeking the sacred 
pavements of upper Fifth Avenue with a deep breath 
of relief. Here, she could be herself. She drifted 
from one shop-window to another, absorbed, with 
something in her expression of the devotee. She 
might have been a woman of elegance, whereas she 
happened to be a little nobody with forty-one dollars 
and seventy-seven cents in the world. 


24 THETIDE 

Characteristically, she postponed thinking about 
the future. She enjoyed the great symphony of the 
streets. The crowds gave her a feeling of security. 

She studied the hats. One, in particular, delighted 
her. It was chinoiserie, a poem in colored silks with 
a funny, pointed crown—no one but Lilah could wear 
such a hat. 

She went on; came back to stare. . . . Delightful. 
. . . Her father had not wanted her to wear mourn¬ 
ing. And this little hat would give her some sort of 
glow. . . . 

She went into the shop. 

It was a gray, padded, mirrored place. And a 
woman in a black dress, too short, with long, square 
sleeves, came forward. 

“The little hat in the window,” Lilah said in her 
best manner. “The Chinese one.” She made a ges¬ 
ture. 

“Ah, yes.” 

The hat was produced, twirled, tipped, turned up¬ 
side down. 

“Let me see.” 

“Certainly.” 

Lilah sat down before a mirror and removed the 
black hat and veil. She ran her fingers through her 
hair and gave a downward and upward thrust of her 
head to receive this crown of bright, twisted silks. 

“Lanvin,” the saleswoman remarked. 

“Really?” 

“A copy.” 

“I thought so.” 


THE TIDE 25 

“But, Madam, it is exact. In everything. The 
silk; the ornament—you won’t see another.” 

Lilah studied her profile. She was indeed a quaint 
and delightful little person. . . . 

“Do you like it?” 

“Very becoming, Madam.” 

Lilah felt a rush of excitement and pleasure. 

“How much is it?” 

“Thirty-five, Madam.” 

“That seems—” 

She broke off. It was really not expensive. 

“You look very well indeed, Madam. You wear 
that type of hat wonderfully. So few can!” 

“I’ll take it.” 

The woman’s manner changed. “May I show you 
others? We have a few models—it is rather early. 

. . . One very beautiful straw, from Molineux. This 
one ... a little more to one side. . . .You wear hats 
so well.” 

Lilah wanted to say: “I make them, too.” 

Instead, she wrinkled up her nose and became very 
contemptuous. “I don’t like it.” 

“No?” 

She went out of the shop wearing the little silk 
turban, and carrying the black hat in a striped box 
inscribed: La Mode Chez Annette . 

Beneath a slate-blue sky the light stone palaces of 
trade were curiously luminous. The Avenue itself, in 
shadow, was a revolving chain of motors; the great 
procession of glittering vehicles moved forward, 


26 THE TIDE 

stopped, was pierced by cross-town traffic, moved 
forward again. The Towers built about the Plaza 
rose into sunlight and were gilded at the tip. Lilah 
found the city very suave, mellow—there was none of 
the brazen clamor of Chicago, the sullen roar of Lon¬ 
don. ... A woman approaching with a dog on a leash 
and wearing a long black cape and a plush tricorn, 
was like a figure by Longhi. . . . 

Lilah was conscious of a keen esthetic pleasure. 
The hat had restored her self-confidence, the certainty 
of success. 

She was always alive to this pageant; its deeper 
meanings, its trend, escaped her. But she saw every 
face that passed—she could label them, put them in 
their niche. Old people touched her heart, if they 
were brave and jaunty; she could be infinitely sorry 
for some suffering and haughty face glimpsed in pass¬ 
ing. The audacious, bow-legged, and blatant girl of 
the people, aping fashion, irritated her; vulgarity ex¬ 
cluded the picturesque; there was nothing wistful 
about gum and lop-sided French heels. Lilah was not 
pitiless, but her pity was aroused by things in them¬ 
selves not tragic—she was sorry only for the strong 
who are defeated by time or disease. The weak and 
helpless annoyed her because they made demands on 
her sympathy. She preferred to give, unsolicited. 

She turned aside at Fifty-seventh Street, eager to 
wear the hat into all the high-roads of fashion. 

Then, superior to fatigue, borne along on the crest 
of that little personal success, she walked downtown 


THE TIDE 27 

again, with her quick, short steps and the imperious 
carriage of her head, threading the impersonal crowds, 
stimulated, eager, warming herself against that pres¬ 
sure of life. 

She climbed the four flights of carpeted stairs 
slowly. All the zest was gone. If her father were 
only there—some one— 

A woman, rather tall, with a curious, ugly face and 
a bang of lightish hair under a queer hat, was leaning 
against the wall in the half-shadow at the top of the 
stairs. 

“Miss Norris? I’m Miss Fuller. I rang and you 
didn’t answer. But I came up anyway. Robert Pea¬ 
body sent me.” 

Lilah said, in a voice she kept for strangers: “I’m 
so glad. Won’t you come in?” 

Miss Fuller followed and looked carefully at every¬ 
thing before she sat down. 

“This isn’t my taste,” Lilah said instantly. 

“It wouldn’t be. Robert raved about it and about 
you. He liked both the room and yourself. He has 
no discrimination, but he is a darling.” 

“What, exactly, do you mean by that?” 

“I mean that frills are wasted on him. He doesn’t 
see them. From what he told me, I did not expect— 
you.” 

Lilah laughed. Her good humor returned. She 
glanced at herself in the mirror. . . . Reassuring, 
that hat. . . . 

“What did he tell you?” 


28 


THE TIDE 

“Oh . . . Pretty . . . Sweet . . . You’re not 
sweet. I hate the word. Why do men use it? Men 
are so stupid. When they think they’re in love with 
you they call you ‘sweet’ and they always muss up 
your hair. I hate being made love to. They never 
do it right. They either choke you or they scratch 
you. It makes me irritable, and they never try it 
again.” 

“Does Robert scratch you?” Lilah asked sweetly. 

“No. He chokes.” 

“He would,” Lilah said. “Do you let him?” 

“I compromise. I insist on vacations. Then we 
are platonic and he is pathetic. He is a child. He 
cries for a lollypop. So I say: c Go ahead. Kiss me. 
And he does. And, afterwards, I use liniment to lim-J 
ber up my neck.” 

“You look like a Vanderbilt,” Lilah remarked. “All 
that wooly hair. And that long neck. And those eye¬ 
brows.” 

“I’m Middle West. My grandfather was a Carlsen, 
a farmer. But my mother took a trip to Chicago be¬ 
fore I was born and saw some wealth and fashion and 
marked me. I love luxury. I can achieve it with 
cheese cloth, safety pins and a little rouge. But now 
I’m bored. I want a French maid.” 

“Why don’t you marry Robert?” 

“I’m going to. If you don’t.” 

“I?” 

“He has called you sweet.” Miss Fuller lighted a 
cigarette. She did it in a characteristic way, a me¬ 
thodical, unhurried movement of her cool, thin hands. 


THE TIDE 


29 

“I won’t fight. I can’t. You have all the weapons. 
And I have none. I’d be kind to him and you’d 
ruin his life. But you would keep him dancing and 
I would see to it that he sat by the fire. I under¬ 
stand him. You never will.” She tossed the match 
away. “And he’ll take you.” 

“Nonsense.” Lilah was pleased. She thought: 
“I’ll take him, rather. She’d better watch out.” 

Aloud, she said: “Robert says you’re a nurse.” 

“I met him six years ago, when I was the starchiest 
graduate you’ve ever seen—pink and white, with a 
cap pinned on a blonde pompadour. It used to be 
fashionable to fall in love with your nurse, and I had 
( a bed-side technique. He asked me to marry him, 
but I wouldn’t, because that was always part of an 
appendix convalescence. Afterwards, he forgot. Of 
course! But later they sent me to the Point to nurse 
his Aunt Whiteside—” 

“I know! The gallstones!” 

“He told you?” 

Miss Fuller quenched her cigarette with the same, 
deliberate, unhurried gesture. She had a strange 
smile, sensitive, in contrast to the clipped irony of 
her conversational style. Lilah saw that this woman 
had been grievously hurt, shockingly buffeted. There 
was something about her calm which suggested the 
heroic self-control of the victim of a hurricane or an 
earthquake. She was afraid, but she was hanging on. 

“So I went. Starch, blonde bang, wrist-watch. 
Very cool. . . . That house. . . . The grandfather’s 
house. About Eighteen-Seventy. Carpets. Lots of 


3 o THE TIDE 

silver. Walnut and ebony. Gongs for dinner. Vel¬ 
vet. You know the sort of thing. ... I don t like 
the grandfather.” 

“Why?” 

“He doesn’t like me. He likes pert women, who 
hiss like cats and scratch and then purr on his knee. 
My starch irritated him. But Robert liked it.” 

“Did he kiss you, then?” 

“No. Not for years.” 

Lilah said gently: “You love him.” 

“Yes. I do.” 

“Well—” 

“Something I see, that you get to see when you 
know him! A gentleness. He is kind to people and 
doesn’t make any fuss. There’s no mystery about 
him. I’m sick of mysteries . . . Doctors ... You 
don’t know what those hospitals are! They make a 
cynic or a huntress out of you, unless you happen to 
be a Florence Nightingale. I’m not. I don’t believe 
in anything.” 

She broke off and Lilah said: “Tell me about your¬ 
self. More! Aren’t you happy?” 

“Sometimes. When I’m alone. And I’m never 
alone.” 

Lilah laughed. “Robert said you might live with 
me ” 

“I could live with you! You’re not the sort of 
woman who talks, or fusses. You make me think of 
a feminine cat, licked, sitting on a cushion. Indif¬ 
ferent and mysterious, but cozy.” 

Lilah enjoyed this admiration; she knew that she 


THE TIDE 


3i 

possessed in an unusual degree the qualities which 
Grace Fuller lacked; she could be seductive because 
she had no particular sense of humor. Grace Fuller 
was the sort of woman who keeps her emotions under 
lock and key because she knows that she is ridiculous, 
(that all emotion is ridiculous. She waited for some 
one to smash in her defenses and rescue her hidden 
self. In the meantime, she leaned on the door, fear¬ 
ful. But Lilah was a naked heart behind a grill. 

With a sudden impulse, Lilah said: “Come, then! 
There are two bedrooms. ... I pay sixty-five a 
month ... Fve got to do something . . . make 
hats . . . dance. . . . We’ll manage.” 

They lighted cigarettes and sat, talking, watching 
each other, until midnight. 

Grace Fuller moved in—her two trunks and a neat 
bag were put in the room which had been Mr. Nor¬ 
ris’. At once, an array of toilet articles appeared on 
the bureau—cosmetics and perfumes of very good 
make in crystal bottles, small, opaque boxes of rouge 
and lip sticks in metal cases. Miss Fuller had a pas¬ 
sion for cosmetics, but she did not look like a woman 
who painted; her skin was her only claim to seduc¬ 
tion, and the faint odor of perfume was an indication 
of her restraint. She was virginal, and, in her ex¬ 
aggerated loneliness, abnormal. She shut the door of 
her room against Lilah, and only emerged, fully 
dressed and curled, for formal conversation. 

She left the apartment early in the morning and re¬ 
turned, often, late at night, dog-tired, but unflinching. 


32 THETIDE 

Lilah made one attempt to get work to do. She 
had heard that one of the fashionable men dress¬ 
makers wanted a designer. His shop, an entire house 
in the East Fifties, was furnished in the exotic man¬ 
ner of Poiret’s establishment in Paris. His manne¬ 
quins inevitably graduated to the stage, or to society. 
Diana, Kitty, Carmencita . . . opulent, tall girls with 
the hands and arms of goddesses. . . . Something 
about this man’s manner had always attracted Lilah. 
He made the exploitation of feminine vanity an enor¬ 
mously profitable business. She went to see him, rely¬ 
ing on the poetic little hat and her manner to carry 
her past the guardians of his privacy to the inner sanc¬ 
tum, his office, a room decorated by Chanler. 

She found the approach unexpectedly easy. He 
was seated behind a desk. She was surprised, upset, 
by his youth and his concise greeting: 

“Won’t you sit down?” 

“Thank you.” 

“You are interested in a wardrobe? It is not the 
season. But there are a few models ...” 

“No. I am a designer. Hats. I want a position 
with you.” 

“There is no opening.” 

“I thought . . . 

“Your experience?” 

“None. I have good taste. ...” 

“I see! That hat?” 

“Lanvin.” 

“Ah.” 

“But I am talented, myself.” 


THE TIDE 


33 


“You know Paris?” 

“Very well.” 

“You are hard up?” 

With a flash of anger, Lilah said: “Yes. I am. I 
want a job.” 

“You shouldn’t have come to me. I am a busy 
man. Why didn’t you see Mr. O’Connor or Mrs. 
Frazer, at the work-rooms?” He wrote something on 
a card and tossed it across the desk. “There! If 
there’s room in the shop, they’ll give you a chance. 
. . . First, you must learn to put hats together. 
Later, perhaps, you can design them.” 

Lilah rose. She did not take the card. She felt 
his eyes, shrewd, appraising, absolutely without illu¬ 
sion, slide over her—it was a physical, a nauseating 
attachment. 

“Thank you,” she said. 

“Not at all.” He waved his hand. His expression 
changed. He dismissed her. “Good morning.” 

She postponed reality. There seemed to be no in¬ 
centive, no immediate need; she was strangely lulled. 
She had, for years, searched for something vital, some¬ 
thing with which to satisfy her restless longing for 
perfection. She had failed. There was nothing ahead 
that she could not, now, recognize as dull, inevitable, 
beyond her capacity for patient endurance. 

She was afraid of death, but she believed that, once 
dead, she would be thoroughly dead. As a child, she 
had had an overdose of religion; her mother had fed 
her all the gloomy details of the orthodox legend; on 


34 THETIDE 

the other hand, she had been conscious that her father, 
secretly, knew better. It was the old tragedy of 
credulity, Santa Claus and the cotton beard. 

Her dreams were deeper, more hidden than is usual 
with women. She wanted love but not what she called 
suburban love. She secretly desired a man who would 
be indifferent to her contempt and beyond the reach 
of her irony. She could imagine herself in love, but 
the co-protagonist was always featureless; she invari¬ 
ably built her romance about her own personality. 
She was forever clothing herself in the garments of 
romance and falling in love with herself. 

Robert Peabody reentered her life a week after the 
relation with Grace Fuller had been established. 

He came one evening when the two women were 
together, Lilah sewing at some impractical square of 
brocade, Grace Fuller, her narrow feet elevated, smok¬ 
ing a cigarette in an amber holder. She had watched 
a man die that afternoon—an old man whose pet par¬ 
ticular nurse and slave she had been for six months. 
Yet there was no sign of relaxation, of discourage¬ 
ment. Her pessimism was too deep, established, like 
some physical disease—slowly, she was hardening in 
the mold fate had made for her. 

Robert Peabody was embarrassed and jovial. Lilah 
found him amusing because, for the first time, she 
saw that another woman really wanted him. 

While he talked, as usual, about his dogs, Grace 
Fuller watched him. Her scrutiny, deep, unswerving, 


THE TIDE 


35 

made Lilah conscious that he was, in a way, hand¬ 
some. Always well-dressed, he had the deft outlines 
of a man accustomed to luxury; and his bland good 
humor was the result of an existence devoid of anxiety. 
His appendix had been the outstanding complication, 
so far. Something of his grandfather’s looks had 
passed to him; he had the high nose with flaring nos¬ 
trils. But his eyes were his mother’s and hers the 
rather sensitive and melancholy mouth. 

He liked these two women. They were outside his 
sphere. He “played about” with the women who lived 
near Peabody’s Point, women he had watched grow 
up from spoiled little girls into a casual maturity; 
he had flirted with all of them, had seen them mar¬ 
ried and had settled into the bantering familiarity of 
the cherished bachelor in a “young married” com¬ 
munity. 

Whatever he felt, inwardly, he was outwardly an 
inflexible optimist. Lilah wondered whether he saw 
Grace Fuller’s eyes, whether, if he saw, he could ap¬ 
preciate the extent, the danger, of that dedication. 
And she remembered, with an unexpected excitement, 
how he had kissed her arm. 

She went on sewing, bending her head so that the 
light from the lamp would fall on her hair. Her soft 
abstraction, her air of modesty and domestic content, 
drew him away from Grace Fuller. He leaned for¬ 
ward to finger the stuff she was making into a use¬ 
less and ornamental bag, and she explained that the 
brocade came from a shop in Florence where the copy- 


THE TIDE 


36 

ing of ancient materials was a specialty. This was 
the robe of Boticelli’s Primavera, a delicate scattering 
of small flowers on a background of cream silk. 

Grace Fuller rose suddenly and went into her bed* 
room. 

“Don’t flirt with me,” Lilah said. “Miss Fuller 
won’t like it.” 

He flushed. “You’re quite mistaken.” 

“You told me you were ‘sweet’ on her.” 

“I am. But I can flirt with you all the same.” 

Already, they had the manner of conspirators. 
Robert lowered his voice and said: “Will you dine 
with me? To-morrow? Say ‘yes.’ I’m going back 
to the Point on Friday. We’ll take a hansom to 
the Park and eat there. What do you say?” 

Lilah whispered: “Yes. I’ll be ready at five. Not 
later.” 

The door opened and Grace Fuller came in again. 
She caught the quick lifting of Robert’s head, his 
smile, at once embarrassed and triumphant. She 
knew him so well that her heart ached for this du¬ 
plicity; she could even pity him for having had to 
hurt her. But she said nothing. 

When he had gone, she spoke from the doorway 
to Lilah, who was winding rough, colored threads 
about cardboard spools. 

“I wonder if you know what love is? Oh, you 
can imagine it! You think about it a lot! But do 
you know? The pain . . . Exhausting ... Of 
trying to pour yourself into a man’s consciousness. 
. . . And then being stupid. Hurting him—push- 


THE TIDE 


37 

ing him off. . . . Pretending. . . . Because you’re 
ashamed of wanting. . . . Killing what you want 
Not wanting what you want until you’ve lost it. . . . ’*• 

“That’s a bit excessive/’ Lilah said. “You’re mor¬ 
bid, aren’t you? I could make any man happy by 
learning to understand him. If he liked mystery, I’d 
be mysterious. If he wanted a pal, I’d pal. To the 
limit.” 

“Could you be domestic?” 

“Certainly.” 

Miss Fuller laughed that short, dry and brittle 
laugh. “What we all say! Pretend to be clay for 
the molding. Other women nag. We wouldn’t! 
Other women suffer jealousy. We wouldn’t! Other 
women fail in the little illusions and go about in curl¬ 
papers and a mask of cold cream, without their men¬ 
tal corsets. We wouldn’t! But married. . . . Well, 
it’s positively thrilling to observe the similitude of 
women. . . . Marriage is a sort of antiphlogistine— 
it brings out all the lurking devils.” 

“How do you know?” 

“I’ve observed . . . remember, I am a nurse. The 
shades up and the light of day on the domestic 
drama ...” 

Lilah said suddenly: “I may take your Robert away 
from you.” 

Miss Fuller seemed to consider. “I see what you 
mean. I’m jealous!” She shook her head. “Robert 
isn’t the man for you. He isn’t a snob. And you 
are. I mean, you care a great deal about things 
Robert never notices.. At the Point he goes about 


38 THE TIDE 

like a hired man in a pair of corduroy trousers and 
an old green sweater. He’s lazy. And sometimes he 
says stupid things ...” 

“What?” Lilah asked sharply. 

She felt a sharp pang of irritability slip into her 
consciousness, edged. Her eyes were lowered; her 
fingers flew around the cardboard spools. 

“Oh, he’s full of platitudes. He collects stamps. 
He reads the wrong books, and he wants children.” 

“Does he?” Lilah’s voice was cool. The inflec¬ 
tion was iced. 

The thought crossed her mind that perhaps GraceJ 
Fuller had lived with Robert. This was at once a 
revelation and a weapon. She glanced up. With a 
look both appraising and sympathetic, she studied 
that worn, disillusioned face, in which the charm of 
a blonde freshness had given way to a shadow, a 
premonition of old age. Vaguely distinguished, aloof, 
sharp and bitter, she had a tender mental surface. 
Lilah knew that she herself could control Grace 
Fuller’s opinions; she was not afraid of her tongue; 
the woman was quivering under the skin. 

“I see what you’re thinking,” Grace Fuller said. 
“It isn’t true. I’ve loved, but not Robert—that way. 
You won’t believe me. He’s decent, as men have for¬ 
gotten how to be decent. . . . Lilah, let me have 
him!” 

She crossed the room suddenly and stood before 
Lilah with her hands clenched at her sides, her face 
strained. “I love him!” she cried. 

Lilah tossed the silks upon the table. “Nonsense,” 


THE TIDE 


39 

she said crisply. “I don’t want your Robert! He’s 
a fearful bore. He’s flat. He moves about on the 
face of the earth like a wet beetle. Grace, you’re 
biased. You’re lop-sided. You’re hypnotized by his 
morality—or his money! You’re making yourself 
ridiculous and Robert is flattered. He doesn’t intend 
to marry you. It’s too comfortable to know that he 
can make you suffer. Why not make him suffer? 
Men don’t appreciate martyrdom. You look like an 
old woman, at thirty. Am I unkind? I don’t mean 
to be. I’m awfully fond of you. ... I tell you, I 
don’t want your Robert. . . . But I can’t help it if 
he should happen to fall in love with me. . . . Men 
do those things. They love the wrong woman. . . . 
If you didn’t care ... If you could ...” 

She broke off. 

“Let’s go to bed. I’m tired. He tires me. I tell 
you he bores me. Let’s not talk about him.” 

Without a word, Grace Fuller went into her room 
and shut the door. 

In a few minutes she came out again. She had 
brushed her hair back from her forehead, and had 
a startled, innocent look. She kept rubbing cold 
cream into her face and neck with little upward, crawl¬ 
ing motions of her finger-tips. She wore a corduroy 
wrapper and felt slippers. Lilah noticed that her feet 
were narrow and bony, like a priest’s v Her elbows 
were sharp. Her shoulders were too narrow. . . . 
Lilah felt round and cozy and soft. She felt warm; 
her flesh delighted her. She thought how delicious she 
must look, sitting there with her feet in high-heeled 


4 o THE TIDE 

slippers tucked under her. She was sorry, in a com¬ 
fortable sort of way, for Grace Fuller. She wanted, 
at that moment, to help her, to give her some of her 
own warmth and brilliance, to bring her into the circle 
of her inevitable success. . . . She saw herself mak¬ 
ing it very delightful for Grace Fuller at Peabody’s 
Point. “My dear Grace, Robert loves to have you. 

He is so fond of you. You must stay as long 
as you can!” Perhaps giving her some decent clothes. 

She would be quite smart in simple things, with 
eccentric hats and bizarre ornaments. ... 

Grace Fuller rubbed the cream into her finger-nails 
with the absorption she put into doing all unimpor¬ 
tant things, as if performing a rite. As Lilah had 
never seen her out of the formality of curled hair 
and rouge, she felt a vague embarrassment. 

“I wanted to say,” Grace Fuller remarked pres¬ 
ently, “that we mustn’t have a misunderstanding. 
You’re more important to me than Robert.” 

“I tell you, I don’t want him,” Lilah repeated. 

She dressed carefully for her meeting with Robert. 
The Chinese hat had lost some of its novelty, but she 
had added a French veil. . . . She was almost, lit¬ 
erally, penniless. 

At five o’clock Robert Peabody arrived. He was 
eager, flushed. 

A shiny hansom-cab, deliciously out of balance, pre¬ 
carious, waited at the curb. A group of curious small 
boys gaped at this contrivance, and, as Lilah and 
Robert crossed the sidewalk, a window was thrown 


THE TIDE 


4i 


up and a burst of laughter floated down to them. 
Lilah was acutely conscious; Robert unaware. He 
had the fine indifference of the wealthy to other peo¬ 
ple’s little humiliations. She had a momentary feel¬ 
ing of defeat. He was infinitely removed. He in¬ 
tended, probably, to treat her as he had treated Grace 
Fuller. . . . 

Then, abruptly, her mood changed. 

The cab turned uptown; the rhythmic clop of hoofs, 
the remote and cushioned cabin, like a sedan on 
wheels, her own youth. . . . Suddenly everything was 
desirable, delightful. This was what she wanted, 
deserved. . . . 

She began to sparkle. She was so intimate, so gay, 
that Robert Peabody’s rather stolid expression changed 
to one of amazed delight in her. He turned around; 
their eyes met. She noticed that his eyes were not 
blue, but hazel, very clear and wide open. She 
pressed her shoulder against him, and he became 
aware of a delicate odor of sandalwood. They 
laughed a good deal. Because she thought that he 
would not be interested in her European experiences, 
she talked about the rare summers she had spent in 
American resorts. She spoke of her “good tennis 
arm” and how an Indian had taught her to handle a 
paddle. As a matter of fact, she was an indifferent 
sport. But she could imagine herself doing all these 
things. She believed she had done them. 

Robert Peabody discovered a new eloquence. He 
had an admirable passion for the out-of-doors. It 
kept him, he said, from drinkin’. In New York, he 


42 THETIDE 

gave way in that point. Prohibition was a good thing 
—he’d be the last person to interfere with such a 
colossal experiment. But any one who could afford 
to drink, drank. He did. He supposed he wasn’t a 
good American. He never had been, in a literal sense. 
Politics didn’t exactly get under his skin; the country 
muddled through without him. He had his property, 
his dogs, his friendships, his conviction of an inalien¬ 
able right to these possessions. If there should be 
social changes, upheavals, revolutions, he would ac¬ 
cept whatever came. He believed in going with the 
times, never bucking the trend, whatever it was. 

The war hadn’t interfered with this facile philoso¬ 
phy; he had accepted the fact that the world was 
fighting mad, stark crazy, gibbering. A phase. It 
had happened before; it would happen again. He 
couldn’t stop it by stating a preference for open fields 
and dogs. So, he had gone to the first officers’ camp, 
and had agreed cheerfully to whatever “authority” 
said. A knack for details, hitherto undiscovered, had 
landed him in the ordnance and he had worn silver 
chevrons in cheerful glory at Rochester, New York. 
Captain Peabody! 

“Now it’s over, I am back where I want to be. The 
world hasn’t changed much. I don’t understand all 
this talk about a new consciousness. Men won’t 
change, either. We had our chance when Wilson 
went to Paris. But the recoil didn’t surprise me. We 
aren’t ready for practical idealism. You and I— 
people who see what might be—aren’t a drop in the 
bucket of public feeling. We’re swamped by millions 


THETIDE 43 

of frightened ignoramuses. They’ll swing back to 
the doddering conservatives, bleating for normalcy. 
They’ll get it! We’re in for another Dark Age.” 

“Don’t you care?” 

“No. I never believed in the pet illusions we 
fought for, anyway. Civilization has always tickled 
my sense of humor. There are certain unchangeable, 
satisfactory things—well, dogs! And days when you 
can smell the sea, sweet, like flowers, blowing in over 
the fields. September days! I’d stack ’em up 
against every bloody war for supremacy, the con¬ 
founded conceit of man—I’m talking like a poet. I’m 
not a poet. I’m lazy. I like peace, and plenty to 
eat.” 

He laughed. “And you. I like you. You’re cute 
as the devil.” 

Lilah turned to him again and let him see the curve 
of her lips. She had never been more vivacious. The 
city flowed by the cab windows with a dignity impos¬ 
sible in a motor, taking place, not as kaleidoscopic 
flashes in a cubistic ensemble, but as buildings, towers, 
parks and people. In the wide brilliance of Madison 
Square there was time to value the great campanile 
soaring out of the feathery green of the park into a 
bland sky, . . . Then, more slowly, up the long in¬ 
cline to the Library, where the lions seemed to gaze 
down their noses over invisible spectacles; they had, 
Lilah remarked, a sort of haughty senility—Grand 
Army of the Republic lions about to recite the “Battle 
of Gettysburg.” One of them had worn a rakish 
snow hat during a February blizzard, the other a 


44 T H E TI D E 

white blanket about his middle, like a pet poodle in 

a wooly-wooly. . . . 

Lilah found the city astonishingly beautiful—but 
something held her from telling Robert Peabody so. 
He would not have shared her delight in the unfin¬ 
ished masterpiece. New York, to him, was simply 
New York; like so many New Yorkers, he suffered 
from a familiarity with marvels. Lilah found it both 
monstrous and audacious. She had always tasted 
cities as a connoisseur tastes wine. Now, in this slate- 
blue twilight, she shivered with pleasure. The lava- 
stream of motors filled the air with a sort of luxuri¬ 
ous purring; it seemed to Lilah that the hidden springs 
of vitality within herself had begun to vibrate, to 
hum, like harp strings; she was vibrant. If some 
one would write a grand opera, not in the manner of 
“Louise,” not lyric, amorous, but metallic, about New 
York! The leit-motif, a theme of feverish, restless 
striving. The minor melodies, machines, riveters, 
steam jets, whistles, sirens, bells, six million human 
voices—unceasing, beating against the human heart 
like the tom-tom of African drums. The sets . . . 
from a window, streets like Sienese back-alleys enor¬ 
mously exaggerated. Vast, tilting walls. A few 
lights on the face of the canon. Weight of stone and 
steel and swaying towers. Or, a bloodless avenue of 
square monoliths, imposing, imponderable, signifi¬ 
cant. . . . 

The cab turned into the Plaza, so long an upheaval 
of derricks, mud, French Gothic and erratic statuary, 
now settled into a beauty of its own, and Robert Pea- 


THETIDE 45 

body said: “Shall we stop here? Or do you prefer 
the Park?” 

Lilah preferred the Park. 

They dined out-of-doors, their faces close together 
over a narrow table. She found him more attractive 
here. He had a genial yet vigorous manner of deal¬ 
ing with waiters and hat-boys, an almost aristocratic 
indifference to publicity and he did not, after calling 
her “cute as the devil,” come back to the attack. He 
let her see that he was aware of the privilege of her 
company. There were other women in the restaurant; 
a startlingly brunette girl in black satin which made 
her look, Lilah thought, like a wet cod-fish, sat almost 
at his elbow, yet he disposed of her, and her seduc¬ 
tion, with a glance. He ordered planked shad and 
regretted that there was no white wine; at the Point, 
he had over a thousand bottles of Sauterne. . . . 

“I want to meet your grandfather,” Lilah inter¬ 
rupted. 

“He would like you. He doesn’t like Grace 
Fuller.” 

“Why?” 

Robert’s face puckered. “I don’t know.” 

Lilah said quickly, in a way she had of disposing 
of things: “She’s not quite sane. She will never be 
contented. She’s such a darling ... but she takes 
life too seriously. She depresses me. She’s like white 
grass growing in a dark place. ... I don’t know. . . . 
Yes, I do know. She’s a celibate. I hope she’ll never 
marry. For her own sake. But more for the man’s. 
I’d pity a man who found that instead of a woman 


46 THE TIDE 

he had an obstinate, distorted idea in his arms. Not 
love at all, but a misconception of love. She wants 
experience but runs away from it—she curls her hair 
and rouges and then hides.” 

“I like her,” Peabody said. “But I don’t pretend 
to understand her. Perhaps you are right.” 

“I know I’m right.” 

She dismissed Grace Fuller and set about captivat¬ 
ing this rather ponderous intelligence. Again, she re¬ 
lied on her quickness, her intuition, her adroit pene¬ 
tration. He had been, evidently, upset by mention 
of Grace Fuller; either he had a sense of responsi¬ 
bility or he was annoyed by Lilah’s analysis. His 
was a basic honesty and loyalty. She changed the 
subject to herself. She could see that she excited 
him; he was, she had heard from Grace Fuller, ac¬ 
customed to women who preferred sport clothes and 
who rode to hounds; he had been brought up in a 
society which imitated, on a smaller, more restricted 
scale, the life of the English counties. He had had no 
intellectual companionship. He could not juggle with 
the stock phrases of the cognoscenti; he was too sim¬ 
ple, or too indifferent, to acquire a modern vocabu¬ 
lary of names and cults, movements and personalities. 
But she could stir his imagination with herself, her 
decisive manner, her melting eyes, the little upward 
turn of her mouth, as if, always, she wanted to be 
kissed. She felt him leaning toward her, absorbed. 
She knew how to make what she said audacious, and, 
by a subtle turn, to leave the implication in doubt. 
She suggested desire without feeling it. This was a 


THE TIDE 47 

part of what other people called her “technique.” 
She was not unaware of it, but she did not consider 
that it was something she ought to be ashamed of. 
Rather, it gave her an inestimable advantage. 

After dinner they walked through the park, their 
arms and shoulders touching in the darkness. There 
was everywhere a subdued gurgle of water in shallow 
basins or lipping the banks of the lake. Couples 
passed, drifting, close together, with a murmur of 
voices. The blatant artificiality of the landscape was 
blurred, softened, gathered into somber walls of vege¬ 
tation, threaded with globes of light. Groups of 
people passed in and out of the shadows, made mys¬ 
terious, dignified by an unreality that had about it 
something of the theater. Faces glimpsed in passing 
were indefinite; the sound of feet on the asphalt paths, 
the murmur of voices were Venetian, melancholy. . . . 

Robert Peabody drew her arm through his. At 
Eighty-fifth Street, as they crossed the road, he raised 
his cane and signalled for a cab. Lilah sank back 
with a little sigh. 

“This is comfortable! Let’s drive.” 

Suddenly his arm went about her shoulders. She 
was surprised at the strength, the violence of his 
grasp. 

“You’re adorable. Let me kiss you.” 

She shook her head. “No.” 

But he bent down, kissed her, once, twice, a dozen 
times. She was breathless, angry, frightened, but 
helpless in the circle of his arm. “Don’t! Don’t!” 
she said. “Please. Here ...” 


48 THE TIDE 

She heard him say: “I love you. I want you to 
marry me.” 

Her heart contracted. How on earth had this hap¬ 
pened? What would the driver think of such a scene ^ 
This was what, all along, she had wanted. He had 
everything . . . everything. . . . Something in his 
eyes, his voice, husky, shaken, made her know that 
he loved her. It would be easy to manage him. . . . 
Love. . . . She couldn’t expect to kiss him like that 
at once. As always, she shrank from contact. But 
if she . . . 

“Answer. Open your eyes.” 

She made a struggle to throw into her expression 
something ardent, convincing. And lifting her face, 
she kissed him. She need not say, at once, the words 
he expected. She was not as dishonest as that. . . . 
A wave of feeling, relief, excitement, went over her. 
His head fell back, down again, on her shoulder. He 
was, suddenly, weak, surrendered to his emotion. She 
saw the back of his neck, his close, blonde hair. The 
intimacy of their attitude assailed her and she pushed 
him away. 

“Not here. Later. ...” 

“You’ll marry me?” 

“Yes. Yes.” 

She lifted her arms and straightened her hat. Then 
she felt her hand seized and his lips fastened on her 
fingers, hungry, insatiable. . . . 


Ill 


L ILAH was afraid to tell Grace Fuller that she 
j had promised to marry Robert Peabody. Her 
conscience, an inconsistent element in her na¬ 
ture, disturbed her to the extent of making her ir¬ 
ritable. She went to her room without saying good 
night. 

She was trembling with excitement and could not 
sleep. Instead, wrapped in a kimono, she paced the 
floor, seeing her white face at intervals in the oval 
mirror of her dressing-table. 

What would her life be with Robert Peabody? Not 
what she had dreamed, certainly. She would have 
the scope money affords. But not the pride of love; 
she would always be a little ashamed of Robert. She 
did not know why, exactly. To justify her accept¬ 
ance of him, she assured herself that she could change 
him, pour him out of his mold into hers. Yet she shiv¬ 
ered with apprehension. He might guess her lack of 
feeling and grow cold himself. Men wanted love, the 
gestures and jealousies, the unconsidered, delicious 
abandonments, passion. She could never give him 
this. And she would miss the wild sweetness, the 
danger, the pain of love that is mutual, acknowledged. 
But she wanted ease. . . . 

She paused to stare at herself. Perhaps she was 
wrong. There might not be love of that sort. Per- 
49 


5 o THE TIDE 

haps she was giving Robert all that he, or any man, 
expected—her prettiness, her charm, her youth. He 
must be forty. He had had experience—but, good 
heavens, she couldn’t be jealous! Only he mustn’t 
go on; if she married him, he must be loyal. . . . 

Pacing the room again, she pictured herself in pos¬ 
session, at last, of security. It was humiliating to 
battle with poverty when you had no wits with which 
to pull yourself out; if she had been one of those 
clever girls who stalk success, on the stage, in studios, 
newspaper offices, shops. . . . She hadn’t their cour¬ 
age or their audacity; she despised struggle. 

Persistently, the idea returned, that she was cheat¬ 
ing. She recalled, with a shudder, an instinctive re¬ 
coil, his attitude as he bent over her hands—it had 
been both supplicating and possessive. 

What she was doing was immoral, wrong. She had 
been brought up to believe that such a step leads to 
good, old-fashioned perdition, hell, damnation and 
brim-stone. Experience had taught her that in all 
probability she would suffer, but that if she were clever 
she could balance the advantage against the price; 
wealth against Robert, love against comfort; she threw 
her charm in, to square the account. She could be 
generous on that score. She would dress remarkably 
well; she would create an interesting atmosphere, and 
if Robert did not know the most entertaining person¬ 
alities in New York, she would get them together; 
before long, she would be a famous hostess. In just 
that, her ability to attract people, lay her genius. She 
could, given the means, make living an art, create, 


THE TIDE 


5i 

out of places and people, something unique and mem¬ 
orable, as Lorenzo of the Medici had made his pages, 
his poets, his ladies and his gardens into an immor¬ 
tal legend. Why not? American literature had re¬ 
cently exploited the soda-water clerk and the corner 
groceryman, the farmer, the traveling salesman, the 
immigrant and the crook. No one was interested in 
the spiritual reactions of that almost extinct dodo, 
the gentleman. Nothing was art that did not deal 
with a profane ape groping for the stars and missing 
them! The more interesting and complex society was 
overlooked in this effort to capture the soul of what 
Lilah called the proletariat; it proved, this soul, as 
elusive as a flea. One was left with the conviction 
that the country was populated by illiterate sensualists 
—a vast, imponderable mediocrity. There was no 
one else. The fine flower had withered in the clutches 
of this overwhelming parasite. An inchoate fumbling 
at the foundations ... a wail of protest . . . igno¬ 
rance and braggadocio. . . . 

Or else, they advertised the flapper, the country- 
club habitue, the pathological spinster and the cad. 
Society was constantly being reminded that it was 
rotten. Novelists were what David Brenner had called 
himself, alley-cats pawing over garbage. Apparently, 
the brave and the witty, the poetic, the exquisite were, 
for artistic purposes, fresh sardines. The cry was for 
Truth, and the whole pack ignored any truth that 
was not putrefied, or, at least, stale. . . . 

Lilah thought: “I can do something to change this.” 

The idea trailed off into a vision, a spectacle, a kind 


52 THE TIDE 

of entertainment in which she played the leading role. 
She saw the house she would have in New York. Her¬ 
self, in gray brocade trimmed at the neck and hem 
with fur, her feet in brocaded slippers, advancing 
across an immense, glowing room, her hand out¬ 
stretched. . . . 

She did not want to hurt Grace Fuller. At break- 
fast she shivered with dread. It would be like put¬ 
ting poison in a cat’s milk. She expected to see Grace 
Fuller actually foam and shriek and stiffen and then 
stretch out dead on the kitchen floor, her bang in curl 
and the pallor of her cheeks brushed faintly with ex¬ 
pensive rouge. 

Lilah was very tender. She made pop-overs and 
cooked the hominy in a double boiler. She hovered 
over Grace Fuller, who ate with precision, as if she 
were afraid of exuberance, as if, Lilah thought, she 
were guarding herself against some strain of hysteria. 

Lilah said suddenly: “Robert asked me to marry 
him last night. I said I would. I know you’ll think 
I’m a liar. I didn’t really want him yesterday morn¬ 
ing! When he kissed me—I did.” 

Miss Fuller went on buttering a slice of toast. She 
did it thoroughly. Then she said in an absolutely 
unchanged voice: “What are you going to do for a 
trousseau?” 

Lilah flushed crimson. To cover her relief, she 
opened the oven door. She had expected something 
more—more feminine. She said: “I thought you 
cared.” 


THE TIDE 53 

“I do. ... I learned certain things in France. 
One of them was not to care too much.” 

“I didn’t know you went to France, Grace.” 

“Three years. . . . And things like this happened. 
... At Soissons there was a French boy, about 
twenty-two years old. He looked nineteen. They 
brought him in with a wound in his abdomen—he told 
me, that first day, that he had looked down at him¬ 
self and had seen his own intestine. He was going 
to die. They all said so. We were being shelled, and 
every night we had to carry the wounded into the 
cellar. He couldn’t be moved. And while all the 
rest of them cried out and groaned or made a joke 
of it, he said nothing. The wards were dark. They 
let me have a baby flash which I held under my apron, 
and I used to run back to him. Sometimes the racket 
was fearful—that long howl and screech of shells 
passing over. Sometimes it was quiet as the tomb. 
I was never sure whether that boy was alive until I 
saw his eyes, blue, steady, patient, asking me to pull 
him through. . . . Well, I did! He was my case. 
He got well. The day came when he was out in the 
garden in a chair, and then he was in uniform again, 
going home. ...” 

Grace Fuller shrugged her shoulders. “I cared. 
Terribly. It was my own little victory. He was a 
brave boy. I used to gloat over the fact that I had 
cheated death. . . . Then, one night, a year later, 
they brought him in again. I was standing in the 
hall when the ambulances came. There had been a 
drive and we had our hands full. Suddenly I saw 


54 T H E TI D E 

him. His stretcher was sopping with blood. He had 
gone back as an observer and his plane had been shot 
down ... he was riddled. But he knew me. And 
again he asked me to see him through. I couldn’t! 
He died there, in the hall ... my victory! And I 
had to see those patient eyes fill up with distrust, with 
protest, with a sort of mocking challenge, as he felt 
himself slipping out of my arms into that red tide....” 

She rose, folding her napkin into a neat square. 

“Since then, I haven’t let myself care.” 

“How did you stand it?” 

“What?” 

“The war.” 

“I didn’t stand it. I changed my nature.” 

Lilah said: “I wanted to do something—help. . . . 
But the women over here acted so badly I was 
ashamed. . . . They seemed to enjoy, some of them, 
all the risk and death. You’d see them rushing down 
the library steps, their faces red, clutching at men, 
trying to drag them into it: ‘You’re going to fight, 
aren’t you? Why aren’t you in khaki?’ And then 
the Liberty drives ... a sort of circus parade of 
ambulances, stretchers, posters smeared with blood, 
pictures of atrocities—that terrible one by George 
Bellows, of a massacre at Dinard. . . . People were 
excited. They took a sort of morbid pleasure. I 
wanted to stay out of it and hold on to sanity, if I 
could. It never ‘got’ me. And when the wounded 
began to arrive, it was worse. One of the doctors at 
Greenhut’s told me that they had to force the women 
out. They weren’t all of them sympathetic; they 


THETIDE 55 

wanted to look at the wounded. The way a crowd 
rushes to an accident. . . . Morbid. Even the women 
who danced with the soldiers and sailors and knitted 
in the theaters struck me as ridiculous. ... I hated 
it.” 

“It was better in France.” 

A silence fell and Lilah’s cheeks burned again. She 
rolled the sleeves of her dress above her elbows and 
began to clear the table. Miss Fuller stood, rigid 
and uncompromising. Presently, in her usual pre¬ 
cise voice, she said: “If you are going to marry Robert, 
you’ll have to have some clothes. Have you any 
money?” 

“No.” 

“How much would you need to see you through? 
I have saved a little. I’ll let you have it.” 

“I can’t allow you to do that.” 

“Why not?” 

“I’ve hurt you—” 

“No, you haven’t.” Unexpectedly, she put her 
arms around Lilah. “I want you to be happy. I ad¬ 
mire you enormously.” 

Lilah hugged her. “Darling Grace! After all, it’s 
better that I should have him. You’ve got strength, 
and I haven’t. Left alone, I’d sink.” 

“Oh, I’ll swim,” Grace Fuller admitted. “Women 
like me always do! We give the impression of 
strength because we have our imaginations under con¬ 
trol. I’m as helpless as you are, but I won’t admit it. 
The men of my family were all farmers. From them, 
perhaps, I got my tolerance. I can’t blame you. I 


s6 THE TIDE 

wish I could! I can’t blame Robert. I have none 
of the usual feminine eagerness to blame men for 
everything that goes wrong. You probably think I 
have no standards. I haven’t. I understand too 
well.” 

She went into the other room and came back wear¬ 
ing her hat, with a rather dog-eared fur neck-piece 
clasped under her chin; in high, tight collars she had 
the swan-like look of Consuela. Lilah was deeply 
sorry for her. For the moment she felt herself in¬ 
ferior. 

“I can let you have five hundred dollars, Lilah. 
Don’t tell Robert.” 

The telephone rang. They looked at each other 
with a glance stripped naked of pretense. 

“Go. It’s Robert.” 

“No! No!” 

“Hurry! Please.” 

Lilah went. She put the receiver to her ear with 
a certain dread, a reluctance. 

And she heard Robert’s voice, vibrant, saying: 
“Lilah? Sweetheart! I want you to meet me for 
lunch. We’ll buy that ring. What d’you say?” He 
broke off. “Is Grace there?” 

“No,” Lilah said distinctly. 

She turned her head and saw the door closing. 

“No,” she repeated. “I’m alone.” 

Lilah was married a month later, in Junius Pea¬ 
body’s house at the Point. 

She had had an overwhelming four weeks. Grace 


THE TIDE 57 

Fuller’s five hundred dollars had no more than cleared 
the first hurdle. When Robert Peabody asked her 
whether she wanted pearls or a bandeau of diamonds, 
she had replied: “I prefer the money. I don’t care 
for jewels, and there are all sorts of things I want, 
and need; foolish things I can’t afford.” 

He had given her a check for five thousand dollars. 

With this sum deposited and in possession of a 
book of blanks smartly bound in leather, Lilah re¬ 
versed her mask of poverty. She wore, instead, her 
most devastating sophistication, a fetching air of pat¬ 
ronage and sweetness. Her first pilgrimage was to 
the gray stone house in the Fifties occupied by the 
esthetic and sharp couturiere who had refused her a 
chance to work. She sent word to him that she was 
interested, this time, in a “wardrobe.” She was 
wearing a slim and expensive frock of red crepe and 
a Paisley turban. She was positively beautiful; her 
slimness, her arched feet in delicate shoes, her gloves, 
were dominating. 

The dressmaker (his name was Maurice) pretended 
not to recognise her. With a bow, he led her to his 
show rooms and, summoning a saleswoman, entered, 
in French, into a passionate discussion of Lilah’s 
height, her coloring, her possibilities. One of the 
deep-skinned models trailed upon the scene in a sheath 
of gold cloth, dragging behind her a tail of emerald 
green chiffon. She met Lilah’s stare with an expres¬ 
sion totally blank, as if she were walking in her sleep. 
Maurice sent for materials, yards and yards of bro¬ 
cade, metallic cloth, crepe de Chine; jade, orange, 


5 g THE TIDE 

violet and dull red mingled on the floor, the backs of 
chairs, across lacquered screens and tables. This 
profligate heap of stuffs went to Lilah’s head, but she 
preserved her air of polite indifference, sitting with 
crossed knees, her feet, in the elaborate, strapped 
shoes, displayed. . . . The model, she decided, had 
ugly ankles. 

At lunch that day she told Robert of her purchases. 

He shook his head. “Where shall you wear them? 
Peabody’s Point is a wilderness—the three houses, my 
own, my father’s and my grandfather’s, a deep forest 
of maples, pines and birch, and the sea! We seldom 
see any one, but when we do, they come on horse¬ 
back or by motor. It is astonishing when the women 
wear evening clothes. On great occasions, a house 
warming or a birthday or a dance—once, or twice, a 
year—there is some show of ceremony. . . . You will 
find us very rural.” 

Lilah stifled her disappointment. “Shan’t we live 
in town in the winter?” 

“If you like. We have a house in Thirty-eighth 
Street. It is closed now.” 

“Take me there!” 

The rooms were dark, and when, admitted by a care¬ 
taker, Lilah and Robert explored the first two floors, 
they found the furniture swaddled in linen, the chan¬ 
deliers wearing net veils, like Bluebeard’s brides, and 
the rugs rolled back. The house was an exact ex¬ 
ample of the New York residence of the early Eighties. 
The marble mantels we^e surmounted by elaborate, 


THE TIDE 59 

wooden fret-work, an intricacy of shelves and pilas¬ 
ters, screens and grills, roosting place for those use¬ 
less, ugly and enormously expensive vases of the pe¬ 
riod. Mirrors divided the windows and curtains of 
dark red velvet were looped up, held clear of the floor 
by chenille ropes. There was a multiplicity of cush¬ 
ions, tables, tabourettes; paintings, in deep frames, by 
Rosa Bonheur, Henner and Corot, and one luminous 
and arresting Inness, a landscape with elms and a 
river, sunlight and haze, russet, gold, and blue. Lilah 
seized upon this as a reason for enthusiasm. 

“My grandfather understands pictures,” Robert ex¬ 
plained. “Even the modern fellows! I don’t. No 
one has ever taken the trouble to explain what they’re 
all about.” 

“Don’t you like this?” 

“Oh, yes. But Inness wasn’t a modern exactly.” 

Suddenly he put his arm through Lilah’s and said: 
“You’re so clever. If I didn’t know what a darling 
you are, I’d be afraid of you. I want you to teach 
me all these things—what I should like, and why. I 
don’t want you to be ashamed of me.” 

Lilah, with a pretty bend of her head, put her face 
against his shoulder. She was feeling mellow, gen¬ 
erous. This house, a valuable property in Murray 
Hill, was soon to be hers. Going from room to room, 
she mentally refurnished it. 

“I don’t like the house,” she said frankly. “It’s 
hideous—all this Victorian velvet and ebony. Hor¬ 
rible!” 

“Lilah!” 


60 THE TIDE 

His expression warned her. “You sweet old stupid 1 
Of course it’s horrible.” 

He stammered: “It’s a sort of—of monument to 
my grandmother.” 

“A mausoleum,” she corrected. “We’ll change it.” 

Miss Fuller would not go to the Point for the wed¬ 
ding. She had, she insisted, an important case out 
of town. And, with her neat traveling bag and the 
fur neck-piece, she started off the day before Lilah 
left town. She had agreed to keep the apartment 
and to pay the astonished agent on the first of every 
month. 

Lilah went alone. Robert had engaged a compart¬ 
ment for her; she found flowers, candy, books there; 
Lilah Norris, written on Robert’s cards, thrust hastily 
into envelopes stamped with the names of shops in¬ 
ternationally famous. The porter, judging from his 
eagerness, had been tipped. When he closed her into 
this walnut and green plush cell, he reminded her 
that he would call her at five. She would be “put off” 
at Peabody’s Point at five forty-five. . . . 

The train moved out of the city, boring its way 
through the tunnel into a twilight studded with red 
and green, white and topaz-yellow flashes. A glimpse 
of the river. Tall stacks. Then darkness, broken by 
suburban stations, where, for an instant, people and 
motors were glimpsed in a strange immobility, as if 
painted on the car windows. 

Lilah undressed. She enjoyed the unaccustomed 
luxury of her traveling things, so unlike the pack she 


THE TIDE 61 

had slung across her shoulder in Switzerland. Her 
night-gown was sheer batiste, scalloped, threaded with 
white ribbon. She braided her hair, switched off the 
light and lay on her side, staring out of the window. 
The silence was clamorous, yet she could hear the 
beating of her own heart. She pressed her hands 
there, frightened. 

She was going to marriage, in which, supposedly, 
she would never again be alone, like this. . . . Never 
again alone. . . . She ran her hands over her body, 
jealous of herself. Life, the crude fact, was unim¬ 
aginable; she was aloof; somehow, she would gain 
time, hold herself for herself a little longer. . . . Out¬ 
side a late moon had pierced the usual smokiness of 
a city sky. Trees brushed by. The odor of the 
flowers sent by Robert was sickish in the close room. 

. . . Lilah felt suddenly the weight of his affection, 
his conquest. She burned with anger, with a sort of 
resentment. How could he think, expect . . . She 
thought of running away, giving him the slip. . . . 
They would find the compartment, the roses, his fatu¬ 
ous cards, but no Lilah. No woman. She pressed 
her face into the pillow and cried. She was infinitely 
sorry for herself, desolate. If only she were simple! 
If only she could love, accept, like other women! 

In the morning she was happier, sustained by ex¬ 
citement. 

While she dressed, she glanced out of the window 
at a northern landscape of carelessly cleared fields 
now white with daisies, patches of pine and maple, 


62 THE TIDE 

and, beyond, a range of hills, sharply outlined against 
a clear, white sky. Puffs of air came through the 
screen infinitely fresh and cool; country air. Lilah 
took deep breaths. 

At the station, where the train stopped only long 
enough to let down a grinning porter and a step, 
Robert was waiting. He lifted her down, kissed her. 
She was instantly conscious of a difference in him; 
his coat was rough and cold; his face was red, sun¬ 
burned. And his hair, always so smooth and well- 
brushed, had blown askew, over his forehead. It got 
in his eyes and he smoothed it back with an impa¬ 
tience, a carelessness, new to her. 

“Grandfather is waiting. The early morning air 
isn’t awfully good for him. He sent apologies.” 

He hurried her into an open motor and the robe 
was adjusted about her knees. Robert drove. And 
again she noticed that he was in some sense more free. 
His hands on the wheel were casual but in control; 
with a quick turn of his head he scanned the road 
and turned north with a burst of speed startling in 
a man usually so hesitant and cautious. 

“Five miles,” he shouted. “We live at the end of 
nowhere. Our property already—all these fields. 
Wait until you see the woods!” 

The woods were somber in the morning light, green 
as trees are in stage-settings, immensely tall and close 
and straight, upon a carpet of moss and fern, winter- 
green and arbutus. The road at intervals crossed a 
bridle-path, now and then emerging into cleared spaces 





THETIDE 63 

where a tangle of clover, buttercups and daisies grew 
lush, knee-deep. 

Robert brought the car to a standstill and turned 
to Lilah. His face was older in an unexpected seri¬ 
ousness. “This is all yours, Lilah. I am yours. 
Does it mean anything to you that I love you so? 
Your coming here has made me terribly happy—a 
queer sort of happiness, for I can’t sleep or eat. I 
ache for you. I want you to kiss me of your own 
accord. ...” 

“Haven’t I, ever?” 

“No.” 

She lifted her face, but at the first light contact of 
her lips, he could not have told whether she loved 
him or not. He gave to the embrace all the feeling 
he craved from her. She was overwhelmed, relieved. 
Nothing was required of her; she need not show her¬ 
self, give herself up. Not yet. . . . She smiled, with 
closed eyes. . . . 

Suddenly he let her go. Almost violently he re¬ 
laxed his hold, so that she fell back and away from 
him. 

“If you don’t love me, Lilah,” he said, in a dry 
voice, “say so.” 

Lilah protested: “I do! What on earth makes you 
ask?” 

Robert Peabody did not answer, but sat bent for¬ 
ward over the wheel, as if, at a signal from her, he 
would start the car and drive back to the station. His 
expression was terrible; somehow, she knew that he 


64 THETIDE 

had sensed her relief in the moment just passed. She 
had hurt him. It wasn’t going to be altogether 
easy. 

In a silence made poignant by a stir of branches 
and the early morning clamor of birds, she fought for 
the right words, the gesture that would reassure him. 
Her hand touched his sleeve, crept down to his hand 
clenched on the wheel. “It is all new,” she began, 
“strange. ... It isn’t love so much that I feel, but 
recognition ... of you, and this place . . . mine 
. . . you might be a little patient. ...” 

He bent swiftly and kissed her fingers. The car 
sprang forward into the forest again. 

She did not glimpse the sea until they were fairly 
out of the wood and making a wide turn in a sort of 
park, where moss and fern gave way to an incred¬ 
ibly deep sward, smooth, emerald-green. She saw a 
house, another, and a sparkle of water beyond. At 
once she could smell the sea, kelp, sweet and sickish, 
salty. Robert had not spoken, but now he turned 
and said: “Here we are! Lilah! Home!” 

He swept into a gravel driveway and under a porte- 
cochere. . . . She was getting out, rather faint, fright¬ 
ened now that she had committed herself. ... A 
servant spoke to her and Robert said: “Miss Norris, 
Maisie.” 

“How do you do, Miss Norris? I’m sure we’re all 
very glad.” 

The hall, within, was dark—too much wood-work, 
and a huge, stone mantel, top-heavy. Lilah put her 


THE TIDE 65 

hand up to her hat, and, turning instinctively in search 
of a mirror, found herself confronting an old man. 

“My grandfather,” Robert said. “This is Lilah.” 

Junius Peabody was tall and very handsome, at 
eighty-four. He offered his hand, and Lilah, giving 
her own into that dry, rather bony clasp, met his 
eyes. They were black, deep-set, with something 
ironic, quizzical, in their depths, like a spark of light 
at the bottom of a well. He wore a heavy mustache, 
perhaps to hide the leanness of his cheeks. He had 
what Robert had missed, a flame of some sort, a feel¬ 
ing for things, for life, for women, for beauty. 

“Lilah? May I?” 

She felt his lips on her cheek, and noticed a faint 
odor of Cologne. 

“You must be tired. Will you breakfast with us? 
Or, perhaps, later—” 

“Breakfast, by all means,” Lilah said. “I’m not 
tired. I’m very excited and happy.” 

She was, inexplicably, exhilarated again. The old 
man’s look had been appraising, and satisfied. He 
found her delightful. She knew this, and because she 
was certain that he was not easily pleased, she could 
afford to be flattered. He moved at her side through 
the house, across a large, cluttered room to a veranda, 
where Venetian shades were half-drawn against the 
brilliance of the sea in full sunlight; a table had been 
set for breakfast. Geraniums in boxes hedged the 
veranda on three sides. Beyond, a narrow garden 
separated the house from a pebbly beach and rocks 
covered with brown kelp. 


66 


THE TIDE 


“Low tide,” Junius Peabody remarked. 

It was not the house she had pictured. There were 
no Italian gardens. But there was something sub¬ 
stantial and vigorously assertive in the ugly width 
and spread of the wings, the turrets and verandas 
and useless, expensive ornamentation. In the Eighties 
this would have been a “place.” Meadows of wet 
kelp mingled with the fragrant spiciness of geraniums. 
A man servant in an apron, very old, with a crumpled 
mouth in a pink face, brought coffee. And Robert 
said: “Miss Norris, Edwin.” Lilah put just the right 
shade of interest into the pronouncement of the word 
“Edwin” with a rising inflection. She loved Edwin. 
She loved Junius. She loved Robert. She was con¬ 
scious of being more charming, more herself, than 
she had ever been in a life given over to being, al¬ 
ways, some one unlike the real Lilah. The real Lilah 
was a delightful, amusing, affecting little person. 

Once over that moment of appraisal, Junius Pea¬ 
body made it plain that he approved of her. 

And after breakfast, brushing his mustache with 
a large cambric handkerchief, he walked with her into 
what he called the “greenery,” a park-like place at 
the back of the house away from the sea where a gar¬ 
dener worked among formal beds of Spring flowers. 
“No, Robert, you stay back—I want Lilah to my¬ 
self.” 

Robert disappeared and Lilah threw a kiss, very 
prettily, at his back. 

“Robert would like to show you the kennels, but 
that can wait.” 


THE TIDE 


67 

Lilah said impulsively: “It was good of you to let 
me come here to be married. I am very alone. . . 
The few relatives I have are in the West, and I don’t 
like any of them. They will not approve of my 
marrying so soon. But my father wouldn’t care, so 
why should I?” 

They crossed the greenery and, without comment, 
Junius Peabody pointed out another house. “My 
son’s. He died ten years ago. We have closed the 
place. Robert didn’t like it. I’ll show you his house, 
later. Although I dare say you will want to change it, 
it is modern enough. This, you see, is what I call 
the East Aurora period; it was built in nineteen-four, 
when America was beginning to absorb the Morris 
a b c’s. Inside it is worse. . . . Hand-tooled by Fra 
Bunco ...” He broke off. “What perfume is 
that? Sandalwood? Delicious. My dear, we are 
delighted to welcome you.” And before she could 
thank him, he began again: “I am really astonished. 
I didn’t expect you to be—what you are. You are 
very clever; I can see that. Robert won’t under¬ 
stand you, but that won’t matter if you see to it that 
he isn’t humiliated. A woman must never be con¬ 
spicuously superior to her husband. I dare say you 
know just what you are doing.” 

With a flash of anger, she said: “I am very fond 
of him!” 

“I’m glad of that.” 

They came into a small grove of pines, young trees 
near the sea, and on the shore, built upon the dunes, 


68 THETIDE 

she saw another, smaller house, gray-shingled with 
gray blinds and stone chimneys. This, she realized, 
was to be her home. At first glance, it seemed a deso¬ 
late place; there was no garden, only the white sand 
blown into little hills, and glistening, thick blades of 
dune grass and, beyond, the sea. Always keen to 
beauty, she resented the uncompromising grayness of 
the house. “The blinds should be blue,” she said 
quickly, “and there should be yellow and blue awn¬ 
ings and a brick terrace at the back with hydrangeas 
in pots. Why not a wall on this side and turf and 
some poplars?” 

Junius Peabody laughed. “You must ask Robert. 
He will do anything you suggest. He is very much in 
love with you. ... I think you two will make a go 
of it if you won’t be impatient. Robert will be stub¬ 
born if you criticize him. He isn’t as simple or as 
pliable as he seems, on the surface, to be. His father, 
not I, was responsible for his career. My son had 
no more sense of the beautiful than his house indi¬ 
cates; he lived only to serve my creation, Peabody 
and Sons. He never loved or needed to love. He 
quite literally worked himself to death and collapsed 
in harness. But he wanted Robert to do the same 
thing, and, to prepare him, sent him to a boys’ school 
at Territet and then to Columbia! And then, by way 
of hardening him, a trip around the world! For one 
year before his father died, Robert sat in an office in 
the Peabody Building in Boston, staring out of the 
window. ... It might have been, in the end, a 
tragedy.” 


THE TIDE 69 

He took her arm. “Let’s go back. Robert will 
want you, and I don’t like the sun.” 

That night she talked to him again. A mist had 
come up, opaque, chilly, and at intervals a buoy be¬ 
yond the reef tolled like a ship’s bell. A fire was 
lighted in the drawing-room, and Lilah, in a gown of 
disturbing simplicity, very short, faced Junius Pea¬ 
body. He had the outlines she most admired, a dis¬ 
tinguished thinness; his wrists and ankles were char¬ 
acteristic, slender. His elegance was stressed; he had 
not Robert’s unawareness; the details of Junius Pea¬ 
body’s dress were, to the least fold of a tie, considered, 
epicurean. And this ceremony somehow detracted 
from his age, gave him an appearance not in the least 
jaunty, but vivacious. When Lilah dressed for din¬ 
ner, she chose her gown for him, not for Robert; she 
had found, in Junius, an audience appreciative of 
those things Robert overlooked. She thought: “While 
he’s alive, I shall be happy here. I like him because 
he won’t give in to being old. He never apologizes.” 
She had, she knew, brought him something he longed 
for and was too proud to seek, youth and the little 
drama of furbelows and perfumes, ribbons and silk 
stockings. She was pert enough to amuse him. He 
would have despised a sentimental woman. 

Robert left them again. One of his favorite dogs 
had developed a distemper and he went away, wrapped 
in a great coat, to spend a watchful night beside a box 
full of straw where the silver gray bitch lay on her 
side, panting. Robert’s face was puckered with re- 


7 o THE TIDE 

gret and humiliation. “I know you’ll think I’m a 
fool! But that dog’s damned sick, Lilah.” 

When he had gone, Junius Peabody said: “In my 
day, Edwin would have sat up with the dog. Love 
isn’t what it used to be.” 

“I don’t mind,” Lilah said. “Grace Fuller warned 
me.” 

“She did, did she?” The old man jerked in his 
chair. “Unpleasant female. I never liked her. She 
made me feel that my illusions were hocus-pocus, rubj 
bish. As if she had spotted all my weaknesses and 
could put her finger on them, the way those osteopath 
chaps pick out sore spots on your spine. Here, vanity. 
There, arrogance. And down the line.” 

He chose a cigar from a silver box at his elbow. 

“I don’t want the truth. At my age, it’s dangerous. 
I am like a twist of paper that has gone up in flames; 
the shape remains, but at a touch will crumble away. 
. . . Excuse me, my dear. I do not often mention 
my age. After all, I may live twenty years, and I 
must not shrink from the dust too soon.” 

He reflected, with a curious gratification, that he 
was at last very safe from life, because he no longer 
cared what happened to him—nothing could happen. 
He was free from his old restless curiosity, his desire 
to be always in contact with experience. 

“You, my dear, are still seeking the unattainable. 
Immeasurably superior—old age! You want big 
happenings; I am content with little happenings. 
Thank God, I’m not a dyspeptic . . . men who un¬ 
derstand food never are. I’ve never bolted, like these 


THE TIDE 


7 i 

modern business men. To be appreciated, done jus¬ 
tice, breakfast must be given half an hour, luncheon 
an hour, dinner two hours. There’s something vulgar 
in this dishing up and gobbling down. . . . Robert 
says you’re a good cook.” 

“I am,” Lilah admitted. 

“You must make something for me. Even a po¬ 
tato—boiled with art— Consider the slow, the ex¬ 
quisite processes of its growth! The earth must be 
turned, the seed planted. Then the feathery stalks, 
the white blossoms, the root upturned, the gathering. 
. . . Some conception of the potato must be in the 
seed, an immortal thought contained within the physi¬ 
cal means of realization. Very comforting, that idea! 
It gives one at least the security of divine attention. 
Could there have been, before I was at all, a picture 
of me, dry as dust, tall and gaunt, with this mus¬ 
tache? Perhaps! The finished product must be con¬ 
tained in the germ, irrevocable, bound to materialize.” 

“Fatalist!” Lilah cried. 

“Otherwise, wouldn’t an onion grow into an oak 
tree, a toad into an eagle, a mushroom into a man? 
The intention must be there along with the cell struc¬ 
ture! Stay as you are, my dear—you are a lovely 
celestial mistake, an orchid grown into a woman!” 

He was very particular about his cigar—a mild 
panetela with an easy pull. He sliced off the tip 
with a pen-knife, squeezed slowly between thumb and 
forefinger, held the cigar against the light, took it be¬ 
tween his lips, sucked, closed his eyes, and, opening 
them suddenly, applied the match. 


72 


THE TIDE 

“Havana,” he said. “I smoked my first cigar in 
Hergesheimerland. . . . But I mustn’t go back! Old 
men are always doing that, perhaps because youth 
takes on a patina with years.” 

“Were you happy?” Lilah asked. 

“Never! Avid. Insatiable. Restless. Always 
goaded by desire—but not happy. Now, at eighty- 
four, I know how to live. I know that familiarity 
is more precious than novelty, and that relaxation is 
sweeter than distraction.” 

Lilah shook her head. “I don’t believe you. You 
are as eager as I am, perhaps more so.” 

“The world of men is behind—the world of spirit 
opens up. You don’t believe that, either. Wait until 
you are alone with yourself—if you out-live your fam¬ 
ily, as I have. My wife, Minnie, my two brothers, 
my son. Robert doesn’t count. He is a remote de¬ 
scendant.” 

“You won’t die,” Lilah said. 

“I may,” he admitted, with a smile faintly ironic. 
“Although I have always believed that I neither would 
nor could! The earth is too sweet and I have loved 
. . . everything. Other men don’t. They die com¬ 
plaining of a lack, where I have found a surfeit of 
beauty. For twenty years I’ve been burying people 
who didn’t love enough, little disappointed people, 
jealous, enraged, all of them! Because youth had 
gone! Youth!” 

He stood up. And with that quick, faintly un¬ 
steady gait, he went to the mantel, staring up at the 
portrait of a young man in a black coat, a white waist- 


THE TIDE 73 

coat and tie who sat, stiff and somehow violent, in 
a red velvet chair. The thick, black brows almost 
met above the bridge of the nose; the lips were full, 
both sensual and ironic; the eyes small and dark. A 
dark skin stained with red— 

“They used to say I was ‘foreign’ looking. And I 
was proud of it. My wife rather disapproved.” 

He sat down again, stroking his chin. “Poor 
Minnie! Poor girl! To be foreign wasn’t quite re¬ 
spectable in the ’Sixties. But there you have me— 
young! And miserable.” 

“Why miserable?” 

“What do you know about love?” he demanded 
suddenly. “Pretty minx, sitting there with your cig¬ 
arette, talking to me when you should be out in the 
fog with your lover. You modern women are as cold 
as ice. You’re not normal. Nothing about you is 
rational except your love of finery. I have a streak 
of it in myself. I can remember my wife’s night) 
gowns where I have forgotten her opinions. You 
haven’t changed in that . So' many scents and sachets, 
little scissors, sticks, powders, essences, curls, bando¬ 
line and brilliantine, creams and rouges. Precious 
things put away in drawers, wrapped in tissue-paper, 
hidden in boxes! Rites of beauty! For men? For 
love? Instinct? Nothing else is left—” 

He broke off. Lilah watched the fire-light strike 
flashes in the buckles of her slippers. What an amus¬ 
ing old sensualist! What was he trying to prove? 
That he hadn’t loved his wife or that she didn’t love 
Robert? 


74 THE TIDE 

“I won’t argue/’ she said. “Women are different. 
Why not? They are no longer deceived about 
love. ...” 

“Ah.” He stared at her down his nose. 

“There isn’t time for loving nowadays.” Lilah in¬ 
sisted. “Not your sort.” 

“My sort?” 

“I realize—” 

“What you youngsters don’t realize,” he inter¬ 
rupted, with a touch of anger, “is that the old are 
unchanged, within. The casing is rusty, but the 
springs and wheels are as good as ever. What makes 
us different is our nearness to death. We don’t 
change, otherwise.” 

He rose again and beckoned to her. “Come into 
the library; I want to show you something.” 

As she followed him, he said: “This isn’t my taste. 
My wife controlled the furnishing of our houses—a 
Victorian feminine prerogative.” 

“I know. I have seen the house in Murray 
Hill.” 

“I never live there. It is cruelly innocent.” 

“May I change it?” 

“Of course.” 

“Then you aren’t sentimental.” 

He stroked his chin, again Lilah saw that look of 
rather Hogarthian humor. 

“My wife was a dear little soul. She loved me; 
she disapproved of me; she died for me, not guess¬ 
ing, thank God, that she had never entered my imag¬ 
ination. . . . This tobacco jar was my grand-uncle 


THE TIDE 75 

Stephen’s. He brought it from England, a hundred 
years ago.” 

He paused in the hall. “A few of these things are 
mine. If I could count on twenty years, I’d build the 
sort of house I like. These Chippendale chairs— 
gratifying, aren’t they? That ship’s model over the 
door—a full-rigged whaler! And this jade; milky, 
like moonlight. . . . The Chinese are real craftsmen. 
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, ringed with 
blue lines—’ Eh? Why not? Better than hymns 
and prayers and incantations. Now you know how 
spiritual I am! If love of this sort of thing is pagan, 
then I am pagan, and proud of it. I would rather 
carve a piece of jade into such loveliness than save 
a soul. ...” 

He opened a door and Lilah preceded him into a 
room smaller than the others. A coal-fire had burned 
low in a shallow grate. There were several lamps, 
easy chairs and many shelves of books. 

Lilah put her pointed slipper on the fender and 
glanced up at him. “Your room?” 

He said: “It’s quiet, and everything is mine. That 
picture up there is by Kent.” 

“I don’t like it. It’s too frosty.” 

“How about this Shinn?” 

“Naughty!” Lilah exclaimed, rather shocked by the 
naked little woman in a garden hat who was reading 
a French novel. “Do you like it?” 

“Very much.” 

Suddenly he tossed the unfinished cigar into the 
grate. “Sit down. I want to tell you something. 


?6 THE TIDE 

Something very personal. About myself. I’ve never 
told any one. It needn’t embarrass you. But it 
might help you.” 

He went to a writing desk that was closed, and, 
producing a key from his watch-chain, he unlocked 
the top and opened it. It seemed to Lilah that he 
was a bit unsteady. Perhaps so much talk wasnt 
good for him. He turned, holding a small package 
of letters, the envelopes, inscribed to Junius Peabody 
in a big, square hand, bearing the stamp of Italy like 
a seal. “I can recapture,” he said, “the old magic, 
just by touching these letters. . . . They are letters 
from a woman. . . . They have nothing to do with 
my wife, or my son, or Robert. But they have every¬ 
thing to do with people like ourselves.” 

He sat down in the chair facing hers; sank back, 
still holding the slender packet of letters. He seemed, 
in an odd way, to be conjuring up some memory, sum¬ 
moning back a great happening that had grown dim 
in outline. For a moment, she thought he had ceased 
to breathe. Then, in a rather broken voice, he began 
to tell her what he saw: 

He was in Venice, Venice still under the shadow of 
the Austrian eagle, yet, as always, incomparable; a 
city of bizarre facades reflected in salty lagoons; noth¬ 
ing classical—he despised neo-classicism—but cupids, 
garlands, fore-shortened goddesses, golden! He had 
sensed the Venice of Longhi, thank God! Of Titian. 
Of Veronese. These catapulting Venuses and ram¬ 
pant Mars, these lions and gilt domes and love-songs! 


THE TIDE 77 

Nothing mattered save his own recognition of beauty. 
And for a while it bowled him over. 

A woman was part of it, touched by the same un¬ 
reality, removed from all experience. 

He had left Minnie, his wife, that summer, in this 
very house, while he went off to Europe chasing rain¬ 
bows. 

The quest had been much deeper than that, only 
he had been afraid to acknowledge it. Rainbows were 
no part of his need; he was in pursuit of the intangible 
justification, something Minnie could not give him. 
Minnie was life. He wanted, as he supposed all such 
men sooner or later want, the illusion of life. 

In Venice, he had met the woman. No need to 
tell Lilah her name; that would be beyond the point. 
She had put him right again, reaching delicately, ex¬ 
pertly, into his spirit, setting his psychic house in 
order. 

How? He didn’t know. She was a woman of 
women, sane, fearless, magnificent. 

A week only. Out of a lifetime, he reflected, this 
seemed meager compensation. Yet he supposed that 
few men had had as much. A week in Longhi’s 
Venice with a woman in whom purity wore a lace 
mask; a woman strangely aloof, strangely seductive, 
possessed of a miraculous and unbroken mystery. She 
had loved him and had told him nothing of herself. 

He remembered her, wearing white; he could not 
recall the style, but people stared at her. She was 
a tawny woman, dark-skinned, tall, with topaz eyes, 
and she moved with a sort of slow grace—every pose 


7 8 THE TIDE 

an immortal loveliness. A foreigner. That something 
“foreign” in him had leaped to the encounter. So, at 
least, he justified his passion. They seldom spoke. It 
had been, nevertheless, communion. Everything about 
her delighted him—her jewels, her parasols, her per¬ 
fumes. She was distinguished. 

Yet she could play her part in their brief personal 
drama like an artist, delighting in him, in their cli¬ 
maxes, their interludes, their sure approach to the in¬ 
evitable finale, savoring each detail. What a woman! 
He had had no twinge of conscience; almost, he had 
forgotten Minnie. He had had his week. No vul¬ 
garity. No reproaches. No questioning. Beauty. 

Well ... 

She had gone. 

These three letters, written from Belaggio. Then, 
no more, as it should have been! 

“There must be some reason, my dear, for these 
glimpses. A divine tantalization, perhaps. Souls led 
to heaven as a donkey follows a carrot to the crest 
of a hill. . . . Some day you will love this way. 
Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait? You are very like me.” 

Lilah stood up with a quick, almost violent gesture 
of rebellion. “No! How can you?” 

A door opened out from the library to the veranda. 
Lilah threw it back and ran outside. 

The veranda was wet, and a heavy mist poured 
in from the sea. Lilah crossed the garden and hur¬ 
ried toward the kennels along a narrow gravel path. 
The mist stung her bare arms, drenched her hair, 
soaked through the thin soles of her slippers. 


THE TIDE 


79 

Some one loomed out of the shadows and she rec¬ 
ognized Robert, still in his great-coat, bare-headed. 

He cried: “Lilah!” And, startled, blocked the 
path. 

Lilah caught his arm. “Robert. Kiss me again. 
Again. Make me kiss you. ... I want to! I want 
to! Your grandfather’s wrong. I’ll love you. Kiss 
me.” 

They clung together. Her emotion, her fear, be¬ 
came desire. She could not see Robert’s face; his 
restless hands slipped down her arms to her waist, 
back again to her shoulders. She cried, pressing her¬ 
self against him: “Robert!” 

“Poor little girl. Poor little Lilah. It’s all 
right. ...” 

Her lips against his, her arms pinioned, she thought: 
“I love him. That detestable old man. . . . This is 
love— this” 

Aloud, she asked again: “Do you love me?” 

For answer, he lifted her clear of the ground and 
held her, so that she could hear his heart and her own, 
beating together. 


IV 


HERE was no going back now, and Lilah 



went forward swiftly, forgetting, in the ex- 


-*■ citement of the wedding, her hours of doubt. 
She clung to the memory of that moment in the fog, 
it was at once a disguise and a justification. To 
Junius Peabody she had said simply: “I promise you; 
it will be all right.” 

She was married one morning, out-of-doors, before 
an altar made of syringa bloom. For this occasion, 
Robert’s Aunt Whiteside came from some Virginia 
spa, caparisoned, as Junius Peabody put it, like a 
Christmas tree. She found Lilah a “useless orna¬ 
ment.” And said so in an astonishing bass voice. 

There was nothing fashionable about this wedding. 
A few friendly, rather shy and inarticulate people, 
appeared for the ceremony, were introduced, and dis¬ 
appeared immediately. 

Lilah kissed Junius, noticed again the odor of 
Cologne, and was hurried away toward the traditional 
honeymoon in Robert’s motor . . . Portland . . . 
Bath . . . Bar Harbor. ... It would soon be over 
and she could be herself. . . . 

Six months later she was established in Thirty-eighth 
Street. 

A small army of decorators occupied the doorstep 


80 


8i 


THE TIDE 

and besieged Lilah by letter and telephone. And Mrs. 
Junius Peabody’s Victorianism was pulled up, literally, 
by the roots. Gilt-framed mirrors went headlong 
down the “stoop” into moving vans. Chinese porce¬ 
lains and top-heavy vases disappeared into barrels. 
Mantels were ripped out, parquet floors became, in 
some instances, black and white tiles, in others smooth 
painted surfaces. Tabourettes, gilded what-nots, pon¬ 
derous buffets vanished on the backs of moving men, 
and the discreet marbles and pedestaled bronzes were 
banished to heaven knows what storage vault. 

“No one would buy these things,” Lilah explained. 
“You couldn’t give them away! The Ladies’ Home 
Journal has changed all that. I’m not sure whether 
what they’ve got is any better, but at least it’s no 
worse.” 

“I liked it,” Robert said. “It was cozy.” 

Lilah sniffed. 

During the reconstruction they lived on the top 
floor, in rooms occupied in Mrs. Junius Peabody’s 
era by servants. Lilah had painted the furniture her¬ 
self and had hung at the windows curtains of glazed 
chintz—parrots, cabbage roses and gay Kundry- 
blooms. Robert slept in a cottage bed beneath a 
quilted spread and shaved peering into a crackled 
mirror. He was vaguely uncomfortable and dubious. 
Beneath him, the familiar house of his childhood was 
disintegrating, falling to pieces. One by one the 
precious familiarities disappeared. But if it pleased 
Lilah, why, for God’s sake, on with the game! 

What it all meant was beyond Robert’s compre- 


82 THE TIDE 

hension. His mother had been content to spend half 

a lifetime with walnut and plush. . . . And why 

all the fuss about the front door, the brownstone 

steps? 

“But they’re hideous,” Lilah cried. “No one has 
them! Every house on the block, except ours, has 
an English front.” 

Robert shrugged his shoulders, and a month later 
the stone fagade became a brick fagade; the steps 
gave way to a white doorway with a fan grill, and 
window boxes planted with evergreens added that 
touch of a Mayfair dwelling. It was all very discreet, 
and, to Robert, very startling. He could not believe 
his eyes. He wrote to his grandfather that Thirty- 
eighth Street was “jolly giddy.” 

Lilah was supremely happy. She wore chintz 
aprons and bound her hair in silk, as if she were gar¬ 
dening. Her eyes had a critical, appraising look. 
Robert never saw her unless he pursued her to the 
top of a step-ladder or forced his way through the 
ranks of decorators. These people frightened him; 
they had such an air—as if they thought and spoke 
in symbols. It was a secret order to which, appar¬ 
ently, Lilah had been initiated, for she tossed off the 
phraseology with a reckless, and sometimes conde¬ 
scending, carelessness. 

“Isn’t it too delicious? This needle-point? Miss 
de Blauvelt wants brocade, but I insisted . . . ” 

“It’s rather—pale,” Robert said lamely. 

“Nonsense. It’s exquisite. . . . The panels are to 
be painted all the way to the ceiling. Ships and cliffs 


THE TIDE 


83 

and trees and great folds of silk, like Claude Lorraine, 
with steps, you know”— she made a gesture—“and 
funny clouds.” 

She pulled him by the hand. “Come into the 
dining-room—I want you to see something. It’s here! 
The Venetian glass . . . Look! Look!” 

Robert said guardedly: “Purple glass? What for?” 

“For use, silly.” 

“And what are these—vegetables?” 

“For the console—they’re merely decorative.” 

“But I don’t like them!” 

“Never mind. You will, when everything is fin¬ 
ished! An Aubusson rug. Gray walls. A great mir¬ 
ror, cut in squares, here. An enameled table with 
strips of old lace or brocade. Your grandfather’s 
Boucher here. A screen, there. And crystal—” 

“Lilah! Lilah!” 

Robert picked his way through plaster, lathes, 
packing-cases and excelsior whenever he left the house 
to go to the dubious comfort of his Club. He wanted 
the country, his dogs, his old green sweater. But if 
Lilah was happy . . . 

And Lilah happy was less difficult than Lilah un¬ 
happy. At the Point, during the summer, there had 
been days when she was too restive to be quite com¬ 
fortable. He was to blame for something; eventu¬ 
ally he discovered that he was to blame for liking the 
out-of-doors. The implication was vague. Whenever 
Robert let himself go, Lilah would say: “Beautiful? 
Yes?” As if there were some reason for resentment. 
When Robert discovered that she wanted New York, 


8 4 THE TIDE 

and Thirty-eighth Street, he capitulated at once. But 
he had faced mysterious rebuffs, inexplicable moods, 
hurts that were more damnable for being beyond 
analysis. He had wondered. He had questioned 
himself. He had, more than once, blamed himself. 
For what? Why, for failing her somehow! He hated 
to see that look of resentful discontent. He was 
ashamed of being happy! And this was a new sen¬ 
sation. He had always been happy. But he encoun¬ 
tered the feminine rebellion against a mood which 
does not exactly match her own; and at last depressed 
by the atmosphere of blame, he gave way to temper, 
flung himself down and hid his head in his arms. 
Then, Lilah had been repentant; he felt her hand 
on his hair. “Robert, what’s the matter?” He had 
not answered. And Lilah had kissed the back of his 
neck and had called him “cross old Bobsie.” 

With New York an accomplished fact, and the 
woods, the rocks, exchanged for a sultry October in 
town, she was gracious, delightful. 

Robert promised himself that he would never again 
deprive Lilah of anything. She was worthy of the 
most unselfish behavior. ... He adored her. . . . 
He would do anything to hear her call him “cross old 
Bobsie.” 

He made the mistake of becoming his most cheer¬ 
ful, his most optimistic self. 

The panels were to be done by an American artist, 
a man famous for the facility of his execution; he 
painted like a fury. One day you had the cartoons, 




THETIDE 85 

in red chalk—a swirl of draperies, figures of long- 
limbed, rather sheep-like women and top-heavy col¬ 
umns in the Tiepolo manner. The next, a finished 
canvas. 

Robert began to stumble over this Elmer Shawhan 
in his comings and goings. He had none of the trap¬ 
pings Robert expected of painters, but worked in a 
disreputable coat, collarless. He was small and agile, 
Irish, with the head of a vaudeville actor and the feet 
of a Brazilian dancer. 

Lilah found him violent and amusing. 

“I despise women,” he told her, “but I can’t keep 
away from ’em. It’s their drawing—ankles and 
knees and long arms and necks. They’re so damned 
graceful.” 

He was sitting on a scaffold ten feet above her head, 
dangling a pair of patent pumps and ankles encased 
in sheer silk socks. Lilah’s walls were already trans¬ 
formed. Shawhan painted the panels in his studio 
and mounted them himself. 

Lilah could not rest until she found out whether he 
considered her pretty. He made her feel dumpy and 
too blonde, because the women he painted were like 
fresh strawberries mounted on long silk legs. No 
woman had legs like that. . . . 

“I know,” he said. “I paint legs plus the universal 
male exaggeration of their importance. That’s why 
my stuff sells. I got seventy-five thousand dollars 
for covering a millionaire’s home with silk stockings 
and frillies. He thinks he likes it because it’s art.” 

“Isn’t it?” Lilah demanded. 


86 


THE TIDE 

“My stuff? Of course not. Mister Tiepolo of 
New York! No, I’m clever. I have a certain facil¬ 
ity, that’s all. I learned to draw when I was a cub 
reporter on a southern daily—I had to make quick 
sketches of murders, suicides, hangings and celebrities; 
President Cleveland in the morning and Lulu the 
opium-queen in the afternoon. I had to draw! Then 
I came to New York and drew New York. Slums 
and ‘L’ stations and bums in the park and snow and 
fire-engines and horse ’buses. In those days New 
York was a place. Twenty years ago ...” 

“I was seven,” Lilah interrupted. 

“Well, I wasn’t! I was twenty-three. And what I 
had you’ll never have.” 

“Why?” 

“It doesn’t exist any more. You’ll never see Ethel 
Barrymore in 'Captain Jinks’ with those eyes of hers 
and that bass voice and that Barrymore bend. Davis 
was on the crest of the wave and Gibson was immor¬ 
talizing the shirtwaist. It meant something in those 
days to be tailored in England and to wear the kind 
of shoes I wear—look at ’em—no tips—soft as a 
glove! Davis and I wore wing collars when it was 
considered degenerate, and we carried canes in the 
face of public ridicule and private envy. Stanford 
White was building glorious houses. Most of us were 
in love with Minnie Ashley. Talk about the age of 
innocence! Clyde Fitch, Maxine Elliot, Elsie de 
Wolfe and Clara Bloodgood ... I could name a 
dozen. We were the American aristocracy of wit. 


THETIDE 87 

What we said and did was shocking and unique. It 
was worth while being clever because almost no one 
was. To live in Gramercy Park, to eat at the old 
Cafe Martin and not to wear pads in your shoul¬ 
ders—” 

He went back to his canvas with a sort of vio¬ 
lence. 

“I object to to-day because every one is superfi¬ 
cially clever! And there are ten geniuses to one, 
twenty years ago, men who can write colossal novels 
about the war; men you’ve never heard of, like Dos 
Passos, producing a sort of heroic poem, every verse 
beginning and ending with Goddam! Gorgeous! 
And chaps like Manship and Simonson. And Bel¬ 
lows. And God knows who—there are thousands of 
’em.” 

“Well?” Lilah said, being very Russian with her 
cigarette. 

Shawhan came down the ladder. He had a most 
engaging and roguish smile. With the neck of his 
shirt turned in, he was more Byronesque than vaude- 
villian; he would have been romantic if he had not 
looked out at you through eyes so initiated and so 
skeptical. 

“And there you are! Genius is a drug on the 
market.” 

“Then you’re asking too much for these panels,” 
Lilah said sweetly. 

“I’m a specialist,” was his shrewd reply, “not a 
genius. I have cashed in on my facility. You’re 


88 THETIDE 

paying, not for my work, but for my name. When 
people come into this room, they will know who dec¬ 
orated your walls and your stock will jump! 

“How did you manage it?” Lilah asked. 

He smiled. “The New York way. A very exotic 
house and studio. Two marriages with famous and 
temperamental women both of whom divorced me, 
quite amicably. A dash of scandal. Parties every 
one wanted to get to because they were both beau¬ 
tiful and risque and the guests were limited. . . • 
Thirty, no less, no more! An impassioned, and 
anonymous, press agent. Kissing the finger-tips of 
such women as you. Getting the reputation of be- 
ing a misogynist. And legs!” 

Lilah laughed. “And now?” 

“You pay for it.” 

“And you?” . # J 

“It doesn’t leave much to believe in, does it? That s 
why I sneeze when people drag in art. Art! Oh, my 
God. The whole thing is an elaborate hoax. You 
want these walls—these lovely empty spaces filled 
with something gracious, pretty, to harmonize with 
your furniture and your lamp-shades.” 

“Oh, no—” Lilah interrupted. 

“Oh, yes! I beg pardon. Yes! Your husband 
wouldn’t live with a wall by Michelangelo—big, fat 
torsos and bumpy females and snakes. And how 
would you look, in that gown, against a Gaugin 
jungle? Be honest.” 

“Well—” 

“You go to Miss de Blauvelt. She wants to sell 


THE TIDE 89 

you some Louis Quatre chairs and one of those French 
sofas, an escritoire and a five hundred dollar foot¬ 
stool. So she looks through her mental card-index 
and says: ‘French. Shawhan.’ Then she phones me. 
I get the specifications and the limitations and the 
architects’ blue-prints. I go to the Palais Royal and 
make sketches on the back of the menu-card. Mrs. 
Robert Peabody’s Louis Quatre drawing-room for No¬ 
vember twenty-eighth. Lots of pink. A swing, with 
four Watteau ladies and satin garters, a poodle on a 
yellow cushion, some fuzzy trees, a cupid on a ped¬ 
estal and five hundred yards of Alice Blue silk looped 
back with Fragonard tassels. One Tiepolo column, 
one Boucher bosom and a knot of flowers.” 

“You’re disgusting,” Lilah said. 

“This is the Twentieth Century,” he reminded her, 
“and you are living in New York.” 

He backed away from his work, twisting the ladder 
aside. “What do you think of it?” 

“I like it. I believe you do. Isn’t your contempt 
a part of your business manner?” 

“Don’t you see—all this is very sad?” he remarked. 
“What I’ve told you—what I am and what you are, 
and our buying and selling this way—” He broke 
off. “Yes, I like it,” he admitted. 

He stood, his hands on his hips, his head tilted, 
staring at the exquisite thing he had somehow sum¬ 
moned out of his staleness and disillusionment. Into 
his expression something mocking appeared to con¬ 
tradict his absorption. 

“Some day,” he said, “I shall decorate a pork- 


9 0 THE TIDE 

packer’s ballroom. Two hundred thousand down and 
no interference! I shall paint what I like a series 
of cartoons—sky-scrapers, flappers, head-waiters, taxi¬ 
cabs, chorus girls, Jews and fashionable women, 
cabarets, streets, theaters and—the whole mess! 
Wouldn’t it be gorgeous? A parade, all the way 
around the ballroom, where my pork-packer had ex¬ 
pected nymphs in panniers?” 

Lilah tossed her cigarette away and yawned. “I 
see. You’re an artist, after all. And a humbug.” 

He laughed, and their eyes met with appreciation. 

“Perhaps,” Lilah suggested, “you’ll put me into 
that cartoon.” 

His glance deepened; his expression changed; as 
if he sensed the trap laid down by her, he said dryly: 
“Perhaps.” 

Lilah told Robert that Elmer Shawhan was an 
egoist. 

“Probably,” Robert said. “He looks it.” 

“Why? Because he is spectacular?” 

Robert sensed opposition. “Why, yes. His hair ” 

“Externals!” Lilah cried. 

“That’s one of your phrases, Lilah. Don’t trip me 
unfairly. Hair is an external, but the way a man cuts 
it is indicative of something internal. I suspect your 
artist of being what you call him, an egoist, because 
he has patiently cultivated a pompadour. Now, 
whiskers—” 

Lilah put her fingers in her ears. 


THE TIDE 


9i 

As the house began to take form and to emerge 
from the chaos of reconstruction into a very harmoni¬ 
ous and comfortable air of permanence, Lilah discov¬ 
ered that she was being too extravagant. The bills 
for all this mannered luxury began to appear, state¬ 
ments that had a matter-of-fact coldness, a finality. 
She must face, placate Robert, make him see, as al¬ 
ways, in smaller things, her rightness. 

Miss de Blauvelt had an exaggerated and flatter¬ 
ing conception of the wealth of her clients. She was 
accustomed to magnificence and munificence. She 
spent other people’s money, Lilah discovered, with 
the largest possible gesture, and then added her own 
fee, a compensation out of all proportion to her serv¬ 
ices; she was “cheeky” in a way too subtle for rebuff. 

With a graceful sweep of her hands, she would say: 
“I can do a delightful boudoir for ten thousand. Not 
perfect, of course—for that —but modern and witty, 
a perverse little room. Leave it to me. You don’t 
mind?” 

The names of social celebrities flowed in and out 
of the stream of her talk like minnows. She knew 
every one. Lilah gathered that at her own house at 
Dinard she gathered together the froth of fashionable 
and artistic Europe—skimmed off the cream for her 
own amusement. With this woman, business seemed 
to be an excuse for indulging in extravagances. The 
account, rendered before the workmen were out of the 
house, staggered Lilah. She had, she realized, spent 
a fortune. Her heart contracted and the blood rushed 


Q2 THE TIDE 

to her face, receding to leave her trembling, fright¬ 
ened, sick. She had no idea how she was going to 
face Robert with this fact—it was done; there was 
no going back. She should have consulted him. The 
whole thing suggested a sort of vulgar eagerness on 
her part, a head-long impatience. And she had made 
it only too evident that Robert bored her. She must 
go back, patiently, and try to understand herself and 
him, prepare him, somehow, for this preposterous bill 
headed simply De Blauvelt, Interiors, Paris, New 
York. 

Miss de Blauvelt appeared on the following day to 
make what proved to be a final inspection of her handi¬ 
work. Lilah, caught unawares, felt at a disadvantage 
in the presence of this compact little cosmopolitan. 
There was something decidedly challenging in the 
frivolity of her beautiful feet and ankles and the white¬ 
ness of her hair. She was an old woman sustained 
by the success and color of her life. Everything had 
been done that could be done by science and art to 
preserve, make permanent, her famous slimness, her 
provocative and ugly features, her chic. The result 
was not quite human; there were no wrinkles, no 
visible signs of age; in the transparent mask of her 
face, only her eyes seemed to be alive, black, intelli¬ 
gent and cruel. She never smiled and Lilah decided 
that she couldn’t; plastic surgery had deprived her 
of animation. She wore a tube-like dress, short in the 
fashion of the moment, a turban of dyed metallic 
cloth and the curious square-toed, clumsy, strapped 
slippers affected by the Parisian mondaine. 


93 


THE TIDE 

“Well? You like it?” she demanded. 

“Very much.” 

“You had better let me do your country place be¬ 
fore I go back to France.” 

Lilah said decidedly: “Thanks. No.” 

“Why not?” 

“Your bill was exorbitant.” 

Miss de Blauvelt’s eyes came around with a pounce. 
“Nonsense. I was more than charitable! If you ex¬ 
pected department store economies—” 

She broke off. “Surely, you understood—” 

“Oh, yes,” Lilah said hurriedly. “But I shan’t un¬ 
dertake another—not now.” 

“You must come to Dinard,” Miss de Blauvelt said 
in an even voice; “I live there with two amusing and 
talented women, a sculptress and a pianiste. It’s very 
simple and very beautiful.” 

She made an expressive gesture. “This is my last 
house in America. You may tell every one so. It 
will give your interior a peculiar luster and perhaps 
reconcile you to the expense.” 

And with a nod, she walked quickly out, and across 
the pavement to her motor. 

Lilah spent the rest of the afternoon at her desk 
adding up a list of bills, De Blauvelt, Shawhan, 
plumbers, painters, masons, upholsterers, warehouses, 
rugs, electricians, florists, contractors . . . 

She was interrupted by a servant, a new acquisition 
like everything else, who said: “Miss Fuller” in a 


94 THE TIDE 

dubious voice as if he were weary of ushering in 

tradespeople and nobodies. 

Lilah turned with relief. She hated details. She 
almost ran forward to meet Grace Fuller, who came 
into the room unruffled and casual, as she had entered 
the flat in Ninth Street. 

Lilah forgot the bills in the excitement of display¬ 
ing her possessions. And as Grace Fuller followed 
her from room to room she felt her enthusiasm mount¬ 
ing. For the first time her dreams seemed to be con¬ 
crete, her security certain. Her feet slipped along 
the rugs with a luxurious appreciation of their soft¬ 
ness. Grace Fuller followed, saying very little. But 
then she never did have any enthusiasm. She might 
be regretting—poor soul! This warmth and glow, 
after the room in Ninth Street, the gas-log, the oak 
table, the green lamp and her father’s chair, worn 
hollow. 

“It's quite like you,” Grace Fuller said. “Purry. 
I feel stroked myself. Tea? By all means. I’m 
dog-tired. . . . New York all summer—heat that 
withered the geraniums on the fire escape! I had to 
open the dumb-waiter door for ventilation. ...” 

She lighted a cigarette. “How’s Robert?” 

“Awfully well.” 

Lilah busied herself with cups and saucers. She 
did not care to discuss Robert. But Grace Fuller 
said: “He hates New York at this time of year.” 

“He has his club.” 

“Has he?” 

“Are you being disagreeable?” 


“I don’t think so. I want you to be happy, and it 
seems to me that you are doing figure eights around 
the danger sign. ... In November, the Maine na¬ 
tives go down East for deer. Robert always hunts 
with his gang of Perkins and Littlefields and Brew¬ 
sters. Hasn’t he told you?” 

“We have been married less than six months. He 
wouldn’t leave me,” Lilah said concisely. 

“He would, if you gave him the least little push! 
He wanted a moose this year.” 

Abruptly, she changed the subject. She told Lilah 
that she was very nearly worn out. It seemed to be 
her fortune to get nothing but “hopeless cases,” in¬ 
valids engaged in the long-drawn-out process of dying 
by inches. She had had to witness so much poor, 
human suffering, to face the mute or the querulous 
questions of people who “had to know.” “The ones 
who suffer most are the ones who want to stay. They 
seem to love life. They’re so futile, so pathetic! I’ve 
listened for hours to women who could remember 
every detail of their girlhood—how pretty they were, 
and the number of tucks on their graduation dress, 
and all about their wedding day: what he said and 
the cinders on the honeymoon journey, and how he 
took the littlest, weeniest bite out of the lobe of her 
ear. . . . They want it all back again! I’m dog- 
tired, trying to get it for them. When they die, they 
give me just the funny, accusing look that boy in 
France gave me.” 

“Poor Grace.” 

“I’d like to nurse an alcoholic case or a pretty 


9 6 THETIDE 

actress with the mumps. Something to amuse me. I 
don’t understand death. I wish I did. To put us 
here, to inform us that our stay is limited, to offer 
no proof of immortality—it’s damnable! Animals 
don’t know, do they? They’re afraid of being hurt, 
but do they know, when they’re old enough to know 
anything, that some day, no matter how brave and 
quick they are, they’ve got to give it all up?” 

Lilah twisted her shoulders. “For heaven’s sake, 
Grace, be cheerful.” 

“I can’t. I live in an atmosphere of dread and 
tip-toeing. Doctors tip-toeing in and out. Relatives 
tip-toeing in and out. And the poor creature on the 
bed yearning for life! I’m no good any more. A 
rebellious nurse had better stop nursing. I’m going 
to stop, and come back again when I have found some¬ 
thing to offer them.” 

Lilah had been turning a new idea over in her mind. 
Sparring for time, she said: “You can’t justify death, 
Grace.” 

“I might. I sometimes think it is more justifiable 
than life.” 

“Don’t be bitter.” 

“I’m not.” Grace Fuller put her tea-cup down. 
Her expression was excited, she flushed and clasped 
her hands together as she always did when she felt 
anything deeply. “It seems such a waste of power. 
Youth, with all that energy. A wave of youth rising 
up in every generation and spending itself against the 
facts of life. Why must it be? I remember, when 
I was a child, how wonderful it all seemed, fields and 


THETIDE 97 

clouds, and wind. Even the seasons were exciting; 
when the first snow came, I was in ecstasy, watching 
the landscape change. Something was always wait¬ 
ing for me. I never knew, or cared to know what— 
but if I were to open my eyes wide or stretch out my 
hand, there it would be—shining and glorious, mine!” 

She relaxed and sank back, the old cynical look re¬ 
appearing, as if she had lost hope again. 

“I’m a fool. It happens to everybody.” 

Lilah turned quickly and asked: “Would you have 
been happier with Robert?” 

That slow flush remounted. “No.” 

“Then I want you to do something for me. I’m 
swamped with details, correspondence, bills, people I 
don’t want to see and people I must see. I need some 
one to help me. Some one, like you, who has a good 
telephone voice and decent manners. Will you try 
it? Please don’t say no! I hate talking business, 
but I assure you you won’t lose anything. You can 
rent the flat in Ninth Street and come here. Now 
that the second floor is finished, you can have our 
quarters on the third. The servants are on the 
fourth.” 

Seeing Robert in the doorway, Lilah called to him: 
“Hello! Just in time for tea! Grace is going to be 
my secretary. Isn’t it wonderful?” 

Robert took Grace Fuller’s hand and bent down a 
little to smile at her. “I’m glad,” he said. 

“Then I’ll come,” Grace Fuller answered. 

Robert sat down beside Lilah on the narrow French 
sofa that bulked so conspicuously as an item in the 


9 8 THETIDE 

De Blauvelt account. He seemed heavier than usual, 
very pink from his walk across town in a sharp No¬ 
vember wind. His eyes had that untroubled expres¬ 
sion which particularly irritated Lilah because it was 
an indication of profound inner content. She did not 
want him to be contented, to take for granted her 
love, as if a gift so inestimable could be accepted 
easily. Something warned her to keep her temper; 
if Grace Fuller were watching for a rift in the lute 
she would be disappointed. 

She may have made a mistake in asking this wasp¬ 
ish woman to live under the same roof. Strangely 
enough, the prospect excited her. Without Grace 
Fuller, there would be no rebound to life. She could 
fling her challenge: “See what I am, what I have be¬ 
come,” at this surface, and catch, in the deepening 
irony of the other, her own particular shimmer and 
brilliance. Lacking Junius Peabody, who was desir¬ 
able because he enjoyed watching Lilah wrestle with 
destiny, Grace Fuller would be the necessary audi¬ 
ence. To know that she had loved Robert would 
make Robert more endurable. Grace would pore 
over his stamp-albums and condone his canine com¬ 
plex and perhaps read aloud to him the terrible books 
he preferred, murder mysteries and western melo¬ 
dramas: “Nothing like a cracker jack mystery, Lilah! 
Now this chap, Jenkins, was locked up in a house on 
the Hudson and there was a sort of secret passage 
leading down to the river—” 

Lilah came back with a start to the unfamiliar out¬ 
lines of her drawing-room. Robert was being very 


THE TIDE 


99 

genial and talkative. His enameled boots caught the 
fire-light. Lilah’s eyes rested on his hands; she no¬ 
ticed for the first time the breadth and strength of 
his fingers, the blond hair on the backs of his hands. 
Whenever she came in contact with the physical, she 
felt revulsion. She would have preferred a disem¬ 
bodied Robert, or no Robert at all. She turned her 
eyes away with a little shiver of apprehension. . . . 

When Grace Fuller had gone, Lilah sat for a long 
time in silence. Robert lighted a cigarette mounted 
in a long tortoise-shell holder with a gold mouth-piece. 
One hand rested over hers. She wondered what he 
was thinking, whether he liked the room, the house, 
this brand-new air of expensive perfection. The 
sound of his breathing, heavy and regular, was audible 
above the muffled rumble of traffic in the street. A 
servant removed the tea things and drew the shades, 
kindling lights here and there on tables and against 
the paneled walls. 

“Do you like it?” she said at last. 

Robert moved. His answer came with the usual 
slow marshaling of facts and words: “Shall I tell you 
the truth? I prefer the old house at the Point.” His 
hand tightened over hers; she tried to draw her fingers 
away, but he held them within his. “I’ve hurt you! 
But you don’t want me to be a lap-dog, do you? Must 
I bark every time you say: ‘Speak, Fido’?” 

“Why didn’t you tell me so in the beginning? 
did you let me spend all this money?” 

“Because I love you,” he said simply. 

“Do you?” 


Why 


IOO 


THE TIDE 


“Very much.” 

Lilah hurried to the issue. “I’ve spent thousands 
and thousands. For something you hate—” 

“I know very little about such matters/’ he said. 
“I left it to you to re-furnish the house. I expected 
a certain expense. Ten or twenty thousand—” 

“I’ve spent forty thousand,” Lilah said, trying to 
keep her voice steady. 

There was a short silence. Robert’s grasp relaxed 
and she drew her hand away. Presently he said: 
“That is a great deal of money, my dear.” 

With a flash of temper she answered sharply: “Why 
didn’t you stop me, then? Instead of letting me go 
blindly on, believing that I had your consent? Was 
it a trick to trip me up?” 

“Lilah!” 

“Both you and your grandfather think I married 
you because I was hard up and frightened! You’ve 
made me feel your suspicion. Suppose I had really 
loved you—and I tried to make you see that I did— 
wouldn’t your doubting me make me self-conscious?” 

“Now you’re being nasty.” 

She closed her eyes. Shivers of feeling ran through 
her like currents of poison. “Nasty! What a primi¬ 
tive word! I’m being frank, if that’s what you mean.” 

“I thought you did love me,” Robert said. “I’m 
probably old-fashioned, but I admit that I had an en¬ 
tirely different idea of love. I’ve read a lot of trash 
and believed a lot of sentimental idiocy, perhaps. ...” 

“What, exactly, did you expect?” 

He turned. “Lilah! We mustn’t talk like this!” 


She insisted: “What did you expect that I haven’t 
given you?” 

He made a gesture of surrender. “If I told you, 
you’d laugh at me.” 

“Do I laugh at you? How unfair you are! You 
are trying to make me out a cheat.” 

“No. I love you. Only don’t you see—I wanted, 
and still want, companionship. You rather took this 
house out of my hands, didn’t you? As far as I’m 
concerned, it might be a hotel. Even if I have rotten 
taste, I like a little of it around—in my own room, for 
instance. Why not? Am I irrational?” He un¬ 
clasped his hands and clasped them again with a slow 
pressure that whitened his knuckles. “I wanted to 
plan things—go over things with you. I didn’t want 
this woman to buy my bed—it’s none of her busi¬ 
ness! I’ve always dreamed of building a home with 
the woman I loved and married. ... I suppose you’re 
laughing at me.” 

Lilah said nothing. She could not trust her voice. 

She felt that her power over him had been shat¬ 
tered. None of the old tricks would do. She must 
find new magic, and quickly, if she wanted him. 

“I’m not laughing at you,” she said at last. “If 
I’ve done wrong, I’ll do the only thing I can do, under 
the circumstances; I’ll go.” 

“You mean, leave me? Lilah, you’re joking! 
We’re a grown man and woman trying to understand 
each other. I don’t care a damn about that forty 
thousand. It’s you I’ve got to get at—and I can’t 
buy your heart. I’m not rich enough. ...” 


102 


THE TIDE 

“That was a very pretty speech, Robert.” 

“I didn’t mean it to be. I’m in deadly earnest. 
I’m not contented with myself as I am. No one is, 
perhaps. But my case is extreme. I’m pretty much 
of a waster. I waste myself on harmless amuse¬ 
ments, but I waste myself. I thought—I just imag¬ 
ined—it was a damn foolish notion—but I wanted you 
to stir me up, get me started at something, make me 
want to serve, somewhere, somehow. And when you 
married me, you dropped me out entirely—” he 
spread his hands, “for this.” 

He turned to her, his face white and strained. 
“There shouldn’t be much of a toss-up between a 
house and a human being.” 

She did not answer, but sat with her body drawn 
away, her shoulders hunched, her breath quick and 
shallow. Her expression was guarded but she per¬ 
mitted herself a half-smile that was both patient and 
contemptuous. 

“You’re so damned feminine,” he said. “My 
mother was like that. She’d bang doors and sulk. 
And my father would rap and beg her to come out, 
and she wouldn’t. Not for hours, while the rest of 
us went around with lead in our hearts, feeling 
ashamed! When she did open the door, she’d sort 
of smile. She was my mother, but I hated her when 
she did that. ...” 

“What do you want me to say?” Lilah demanded. 

“Something honest,” was his surprising answer. 

She stood up suddenly. “I won’t stand this any 
longer. I won’t!” 


THE TIDE 103 

She did not cry easily, but now she burst suddenly 
into a storm of tears. The flood gates of fear and 
questioning broke; she was swept away. Through it 
all, she was aware of the room, of her own attitude 
and of Robert, frightened, aghast, repentant, trying 
to tear her hands away from her face. 

“Don’t cry. Lilah, don’t cry.” 

She collapsed against him and he drew her down 
on his knees. His unsteady hands caressed her hair. 
She felt his lips on her neck. She drew in her breath 
sharply and the tears stopped; with shut eyes she re¬ 
mained against his shoulder, motionless. The storm 
of feeling had passed, leaving again that curious un¬ 
reality. Robert was not a part of experience; he was 
in her life for some purpose, to carry her forward a 
little way. Without discontent there could be no ad¬ 
vance. From him, she would go on, perhaps to love. 
. . . But he already felt what she could not feel, and 
this involved her because she had given herself. She 
shivered and a deep sigh cut through her immobility. 
His arms tightened. He kept on whispering, with his 
lips against her ear, but she heard nothing. 

She became conscious again of the large expanse 
of Aubusson and of pools of light in which hot-house 
flowers seemed made of wax, and of sleek surfaces, 
smooth contours. Her own slippers, the chiffon across 
her knees, were a part of the vision. 

Robert was saying: “We mustn’t quarrel. It’s 
childish. I’ll do any earthly thing for you.” 

With a quick, almost feline motion, she turned in 
his arms. “Here goes,” she said to herself. 

And very deliberately, purposefully, she kissed him. 


V 


W ITH that perilous moment bridged, Robert 
given again his unquestioning security in 
her, Lilah began her search for experience, 
for satisfaction, for a vague, undetermined happiness. 
She had for so many years peered over the wall at 
the social garden-party, at women in light dresses and 
men in polished hats, marionettes, voiceless, yet ani¬ 
mated, infinitely removed—she had imagined so 
much, given these people a wholly romantic and un¬ 
natural luster— Now she found herself about to 
drop into the garden, among them, and her eager¬ 
ness took Robert’s breath away. He told himself that 
he must be patient; when the novelty had worn off, 
when Lilah had rubbed elbows with a world already 
familiar to him, she, too, would discard it. In the 
meantime, he tried to content himself with her rare 
impulses of affection, hasty caresses, light kisses that 
stung his flesh and penetrated to his heart like thin, 
precise knife-thrusts. For the most part she met him 
with banter and postponement, as if she were skim¬ 
ming over the dark depths of life, a vivid and elusive 
skater on silver skates. . . . 

He found himself, suddenly, a slave to hope. Some 
day she would skim back to him, into the circle made 
by his love, his arms, and remain there, safe. But 
she must first dart here and there, fearless and foolish, 
104 


THE TIDE 


105 

enjoying herself. It became his dubious pleasure to 
watch, ready to pull her out if the ice should crack. 

Robert was not exactly a fool, although he took no 
pains to appear otherwise. What he had seen of the 
world had landed him back at the Point again, where, 
he argued, all the facts of life and death, of love and 
hate, were uncomplicated and recognizable. He 
could not see, he told Lilah, why experience should 
acquire anything by multiplication. You were born, 
you loved, hated and died. You could do all these 
things, and get out of it what there was in it, as well 
in one place as in another; nothing was gained by 
chasing down the horizon—once you got there, it was 
the same, love and life, hate and death. He preferred 
a limited existence to the accumulated sensations of¬ 
fered by such cities as New York and Paris. Crowds 
gave him a mental indigestion. Ideas, unless they 
were based on truths, caused him to suffer an intel¬ 
lectual heart-burn. He was not swift enough to chase 
the casual and elusive theories of most modernists, 
who were content with the haphazard because no one 
could pause long enough to argue or to prove. 

But he was willing, after that sharp quarrel with 
Lilah, to experiment. 

He made a hurried trip to Maine and shamefacedly 
kissed his spaniels, turning back to New York with 
an assumed eagerness that deceived even himself. In 
the train, he left the sleeper for the smoking-car and 
sat up all night trying, as he put it, to reduce Lilah to 
a common denominator. The secret of her fascina¬ 
tion lay in her swift and inexplicable changes of mood; 


106 THE TIDE 

he waited for favors with a feverish sort of excite¬ 
ment. It was probably unhealthy, bad for him to 
be so buffeted about by feeling, alternately exalted to 
heaven and left flat, with a sense of humiliation and 
shame. 

Another type of man might spare himself indignity 
by letting her see a certain brutality. But Robert 
was not so gifted. He could only be himself. 

For her he had abandoned his “drinkin’ ” and had 
tried desperately to part his hair on the side. The 
green sweater had gone down before her contempt. 
In a hundred little ways he tried to re-make, im¬ 
prove, the outward man; he knew when he bored 
her, although he was never certain why he bored her. 
His enthusiasms were as authentic as hers. But Lilah 
was Lilah, and for such a woman he, any man, would 
attempt the impossible. 

He had wanted a strong, sweet, fearless love, ecstasy 
and pride and recognition. 

What he had was different, but he could not be 
sure that he had not wanted too much. Perhaps all 
women were like Lilah, and tormented you, where 
they should offer their breasts for you to put your 
head against and rest, and rest, from life. 

When Grace Fuller moved in, Robert felt more 
comfortable. She was a familiar, understanding sort 
of woman. 

He wondered whether Lilah were justified in call¬ 
ing Grace a deliberate celibate. He began to study 
her face, to question his knowledge of her. She had 



THE TIDE 107 

never enjoyed kissing him, but had always pushed 
him away, with an expression almost of fear in her 
eyes. He couldn’t say that he had enjoyed it, either; 
it was too much like forcing her to his will. . . . 
There were times, at night, when Lilah was strange 
and emotional, when she pressed against him and ran 
her fingers up and down the back of his neck with 
the caress he liked, and kissed him, quick, almost 
furtive kisses; when she relaxed in his arms, suddenly, 
as if she were about to surrender, and then was tense 
again, pushing him away, turning her face aside. . . . 

He couldn’t understand. 

Grace left him alone, left his senses alone. She 
was a good companion in spite of her sharp tongue. 
He supposed that all nurses had that same air of 
watching out for you, mothering you, seeing that 
things were comfortable and orderly. There was no 
trace in her manner or her look, of remembering; 
she let him off, magnificently. He would say that 
for her; she was a sport! They began again, as 
people who have only just met. And all those mean¬ 
ingless kisses and casual, artificial embraces were for¬ 
gotten in their common passion for Lilah. 

Lilah became a bond between them. When Robert 
came in and Lilah was not at home, he sought Grace 
and questioned her. 

Lilah was fascinating, reckless, just a little terrible 
and they never tired of discussing her. She had done 
this, or that. This one and that one had telephoned. 
She had bought a new dress or a new book. Every¬ 
thing she did startled them, because, once certain of 


IO S THE TIDE 

Robert, Lilah had become more startling, more reck- 

less and more insatiable than ever. 

It was as if she had come into full possession of 
life without questioning her right to it. She was not, 
as far as Robert could see, happy, but she was, on 
the other hand, arrogant with fulfillment. Because 
she herself had succeeded, she could not help having 
contempt for people who had failed. 

This amused Robert, but it was also cause for a 
certain amount of chagrin, since he saw that his posi¬ 
tion had been the lever she needed to lift her out of 
obscurity. She could never have done it alone. 

But because he loved her, he did for her everything 
she seemed to require. Before long, she knew every 
one of importance in Robert’s world. It was a world 
limited by necessity to a few hundred souls. Lilah 
called them Murray Hill blackbirds. They were, in 
fact, the old guard, a thinned-out company of so-called 
Knickerbockers, New Yorkers long enough to cherish 
their few square blocks of sacred soil with a tenacity 
that was almost aristocratic. 

They gave Lilah critical inspection; her house was 
less important and could, in its severe restraint and 
exact emphasis, be taken for granted. 

Flushed, beautiful, excited, Lilah received them. 
The sleek Aubusson became the arena of her first so¬ 
cial struggle. These people were fashionable but not 
modish. For them, sensing their prejudices, Lilah 
wore black and was over-careful of her accent. Her 
Russian atmosphere was discarded for the occasion, 
and Robert and Grace were amazed, embarrassed, by 


THE TIDE 


109 

a totally different Lilah, a chatelaine, wistful, eager 
and disarming. 

Robert was rather proud of the gathering; people 
like this made him feel safer about the future; they 
cemented the cracks in society. He adored dowdy 
wealth because it was an indication of permanence, 
a stand against the upstart, ’Change. There was 
something plucky about foulard, sensible shoes and 
elaborate whiskers in the Jazz age. While these 
people lived, the last cable held. Their names were 
less impressive now that their city had become un¬ 
aware of them. But Lilah seemed to enjoy juggling 
these rather musty titles. Robert didn’t know it, but 
she was, consciously, laying a foundation down. She 
would stand, eventually, not upon the quicksand of 
new, untried, if glamorous names, but upon the veri¬ 
table, bed-rock Manhattanese. 

Afterwards, to Grace and Robert, she was explicit: 
“What fearful bores! All of them, except Mrs. 
Humphrey-hyphen-whatever-her-name-is. . . . The red¬ 
headed one.” 

“She goes everywhere,” Robert explained, “and is 
invited nowhere. She was glorious, thirty years ago.” 

“She is now.” 

“She’s a bad egg,” Robert said. 

“What do you mean, exactly?” 

“Oh, she left her husband, and lived with a chap— 
some one—I’ve forgotten. . . . She’s quite purple.” 

Lilah laughed. “I’d die if I had to know these 
people. ... I liked your purple one. She was hu¬ 
man. The rest . . . blackbirds!” 


no 


THE TIDE 

She was being Russian again. . . . While the new 
servant, placated by the announcement of so many 
celebrated blackbirds, removed the tea tables and 
gathered up cups and saucers, Lilah disposed of 
Robert’s friends with a tirade of pointed witticisms. 
She could afford to laugh at them because now, she 
knew, she could subjugate them. All she had to do 
was to snub the purple lady, entertain discreetly, 
grow old, and die. In ten years she would look just 
like the rest of them—ground-grippers and a pince-nez, 
a maribou boa, a bit of real lace, amethysts and rheu¬ 
matism in her finger-joints. . . . She preferred more 
difficult attainment. . . . 

Suddenly she went to the piano and, still smoking, 
played a rakish accompaniment to a French song. 

“Je sais que c’est une folie!” 

Robert and Grace Fuller turned about in their 
chairs and listened. She seemed to be unaware of 
them. With her head thrown back, the cigarette 
aslant, she sang in a light, high voice, a little song 
about madness and youth and la tendresse and, melt- 
ingly, Vamour. 

From this little occasion, Lilah stepped off into New 
York. There were, she discovered, no barriers raised 
against a pretty, witty and wealthy woman. She had 
all the ingredients to make a very potent brew. 

In the beginning, Robert was always at her elbow, 
puzzled, but stimulated in exact proportion to her 
own pleasure. New York was not “dry” and before 
long Robert was drinking again with that boastful 


THE TIDE 


hi 


abandonment characteristic of prohibition. Every¬ 
where there was gin, and according to the social scale, 
it was either genuine, or frankly synthetic. Lilah 
drank for the first time in her life, steadily, carelessly. 
She explained to Robert that there was no other way 
to “fizz” at dinner or to hold off fatigue. And, hap¬ 
pening to discover a substantial supply of good wines 
and whisky in the cellar of the Murray Hill house, 
she wrote to Junius Peabody and obtained his some¬ 
what satirical permission to uncork all but the rarest 
vintages. Those, he explained, belonged to his “heirs” 
and were to be handed down as historical evidence. 
Lilah must consider, take pity on the parched palates 
of her sons. . . . 

Lilah tossed the letter into the fire. She did not 
intend that there should be sons. She was infected 
by the casuistry of the age, a total lack of interest 
in the coming generation. Behind men’s lives there 
was no longer any sustaining idealism, any heroic 
faith in an unbroken purpose. The war had severed 
a link in the chain of passions, spiritual, national and 
racial. The day, the needs and fulfillments of the 
day, sufficed. 

Robert could find nothing to refute her claim that 
the war had made morality ridiculous and had stripped 
adolescent humanity of its illusions. Everywhere, in 
both men and women, he encountered the cynicism 
that goes, usually, with embittered old age, with fail¬ 
ure and disappointment. People were reckless be¬ 
cause the moral skids were off; there was a gay de¬ 
termination, everywhere evident, to meet disaster as 


112 


THE TIDE 

gayly as possible. But this was not heroic; it was 
cowardly, and Robert found himself despising the 
times he lived in. 

As usual, he was not expressive. Something about 
his physical pinkness and blondness, his air of being 
extremely well-fed and well-brushed, held him back 
from complaining. Lilah might be right. Certainly, 
there was no evidence of spirituality, of change. 

New York was dancing-mad, in a mood essentially 
unlike the madness of Nineteen-Four teen, when blind 
satiety had twirled on the lid of a seething volcano. 
This madness was sophisticated and purposeful. The 
Argentine tango had given way to the primitive 
rhythms of Africa and Maylasia, a brutal tom-toming, 
savagery stalking progress through a maze of the 
senses. There were very few private dances. Robert 
could remember the day of the cotillion leader, Ward 
McAllister’s reign. Now, society patronized the com¬ 
mercial dance-halls or the exclusive “clubs” given 
over to all-night dancing, in defiance of a closing law 
which arbitrarily separated jazzing couples at one in 
the morning. There were few formal occasions; 
hostesses relied upon haphazard dinner-parties, a box 
at the theater or the opera, and the confused, pris¬ 
matic, exciting contact afterwards. 

Lilah danced beautifully, without a trace of vul¬ 
garity, but Robert objected to the frank enticement 
of her gowns that displayed her flesh to the casual 
observer. She answered that he belonged in the Dark 
Ages; no one paid any attention to backs and arms; 


THE TIDE 113 

the sight was too usual. Fashion had freed women 
because women had first freed themselves. They were 
too frankly undressed to be alluring, and men ought 
to be grateful; nudity rid them of obscene imagin¬ 
ings. 

Robert was not certain that women’s clothes were 
a symbol of masculine indifference. Lilah might be 
right; she was infinitely more clever than he, and be¬ 
sides she said things with a conviction, a finality, that 
floored him. It is hard to contradict a woman you 
love. He had his reservations. 

They rarely dined at home. As the winter pro¬ 
gressed, their program of pleasure became more com¬ 
plicated. The details were left to Grace Fuller, who 
sat at a desk the better part of every day, answering 
the telephone and attending to Lilah’s correspondence. 
An avalanche of people had swept Robert’s handful 
of Murray Hill blackbirds out of the picture. It had 
been but a step from these conservatives to their chil¬ 
dren, the reckless generation that had outlived but 
had not out-thought the war; and from them to the 
professionals, a little world of hard, bright, amazingly 
talented modernists, racially nondescript, intellectually 
polyglot, artistically indeterminate. 

Robert encountered too many enthusiasms to have 
much faith in a standard of taste. A sort of united 
press-agentry conspired to prove that there was an 
American art. Painstakingly, Robert sought what 
Lilah declared already existed, and he failed to find 
it. He found, instead, a horde of facile, astonishing 
copyists. The extremists irritated him because they 


ii4 THE TIDE 

struck him as being too lazy to study. Further than 

that, he refused to express himself. 

For several months he followed wherever Lilah led. 
Then it became an easy matter to excuse himself. 
He did not dance, and the role of caryatid to the 
striped awning at the Palais Royal was proving irk¬ 
some. Conversation, he insisted, had been annihilated 
by those jungle noises produced by the saxaphone, the 
oboe, the violin, the piano and the bass-drum. He 
was not capable of feeling the necessary emotion; he 
preferred staying at home to holding a half-dozen 
strange and hectic women in his arms. 

“By all means, stay,” Lilah said agreeably. She 
kissed him on the top of his head and went out, 
wrapped in a voluminous coat of gold cloth, from 
which her face emerged, powdered, delicately rouged, 
like the face of a bisque figurine. 

Her mistiness had taken on a certain sharp and de¬ 
fined quality; she was more accentuated, less shadowy. 
The petulant droop of her lips was pronounced; her 
eyes were larger and more brilliant—they sought ad¬ 
miration frankly, if disdainfully, and gave nothing in 
return. 

Robert went to his easy chair with a sense of hav¬ 
ing been left flat. He expected at least a show of 
protest, of regret. 

Grace Fuller was at work, in the library; he heard 
the click of her typewriter. He might go to her. 
Damn it, why not? She might be able to tell him 
what Lilah had meant when she said, “By all means, 
stay.” 


THE TIDE 


ii5 

He climbed the stairs slowly, puffing his cigar. He 
was, he realized, very tired. Pleasure exhausted him 
because he didn’t believe in it. To Lilah, it had all 
the luster of a Cause. 

Grace Fuller glanced up. 

“Not going?” 

“Not going.” 

“Why?” 

Robert said lightly: “I’m fagged. Old age, I 
suppose.” 

She pushed the machine away and sat staring at 
him with an expression which made him vaguely un¬ 
comfortable. 

“What did Lilah say?” 

Robert laughed: “She invited me by all means to 
suit myself.” 

“You made a mistake. Why didn’t you tell her 
how tired you are and make her stay at home?” 

“I can’t make Lilah do anything.” 

“I wouldn’t admit it, if I were you.” 

“Why not? She is undisciplined, but I would be 
the last one to try to curb her.” 

“It’s too late, Robert. Lilah has taken the bit. 
She’s running away from you.” 

With a pang of irritable fear, Robert said sharply: 
“Nonsense.” 

Grace Fuller jerked the typewriter forward again and 
struck at the keys with her long, cool fingers. Her 
mouth had hardened; her eyes were obstinate. “Very 
well,” she said. 

“See here, Grace. Don’t exaggerate! Lilah’s ex- 


n6 THE TIDE 

cited. She has never seen life. She isn't stale. And 
you and I are. . . . She’ll get over it. There’s good 
in her.” 

“It isn’t ‘bad’ to love life,” Grace answered. “I am 
only suggesting that it is bad for you.” 

“I can stand it.” 

Grace Fuller gathered together her day’s work with 
deliberate gestures, sheaves of gray note-paper heavily 
embossed with the Thirty-eighth Street address in the 
English fashion, square envelopes, checks and receipted 
bills. Then she rose and stood for a moment looking 
down at Robert. 

“I’m really very happy, Grace,” he said, on his guard 
against something in her expression. 

“I’m awfully glad,” she said finally, “to hear that.” 

She turned to leave the room, but Robert spoke 
quickly: “Don’t go. I want to talk to you. . . .” 
He hesitated, and then said awkwardly, “about your¬ 
self.” 

“Myself?” Grace Fuller hesitated, flushing. “Please 
don’t.” 

But she came back, and sank with a deep sigh, a 
sudden, almost pathetic relaxation, into a chair before 
the fire. Robert had never seen her looking so posi¬ 
tively ugly; the guards were down; her distinction had 
given way to the essential woman, a creature defeated 
by her own disbelief. It was shocking, and to Robert, 
humiliating. He turned his eyes away. 

“Don’t talk about me,” Grace said. “I prefer to 
be left in my own Nirvana of self-forgetfulness. I 


THE TIDE n 7 

have conquered ambition and regret, and you’re sorry 
for me! You ought to congratulate me. ...” 

She caught her breath sharply. “How well that 
sounded! I almost convinced myself ...” She 
smiled crookedly at him, with a funny little grimace. 
“You can’t get Nirvana without surrendering. I sup¬ 
pose there’s some primal bug of hope in my system; 
I still cherish the unattainable. I wish I had had the 
courage to fling myself away, as nuns do. What 
peace! To believe ... I can’t . . . Here I am, 
talking about myself. ...” 

“There ought to be some way,” Robert said, “to 
live in the world and like it. I used to. At one time 
I had things reduced to pretty simple terms. Lilah 
has shaken me out of my security. She is like a 
humming-bird, or something swift and alive. You’re 
right—she has left me behind! My own world is 
stale, and hers is beyond my comprehension. Those 
darts and flights and quick stabs at things. . . . When 
a man gets to be my age, he wants to stand on a sort 
of hill and look off at his future. I’m too old to be 
puffing up the nether side. Frankly, I don’t know 
where Lilah is leading me, or whether, if I ever over¬ 
take her, I shall see anything beyond. Have I said 
too much? This isn’t in the nature of a confession. 
I’m not disgruntled. Only I thought that you 
might ...” 

Grace interrupted: “I can’t analyze her. She 
dazzles me. For all I know she is shallow water, but 
I am more inclined to think that she is beyond our 


n8 THE TIDE 

depth, yours and mine. We’re making rather fools 
of ourselves trying to reach her and drag her up to 
our level into the common light of day. I adore her. 
She is the only human being I’ve ever known I could 
believe in, because she is absolutely honest.” 

“Then why—” Robert began. 

“Because you’ll never understand her! Dear old 
Robert. You’re a brownstone-front and Lilah is an 
English basement. You’ve inherited all the prejudices 
and social quaverings of the ’Eighties. Lilah is— I 
wish there were a superlative for the word modern; 
would it be futurist? She has bolted into a new gen¬ 
eration, with all its recklessness and daring and pas¬ 
sion for facts. She likes things as they are, raw and 
naked. And that makes her saner than you and me, 
and safer.” 

“I’m not sure that you’re right,” Robert said after 
a moment. “I think Lilah dodges reality. And what 
I’m afraid of is that the facts will spring out from 
ambush and hurt her terribly. I don’t want her hurt! 
There’s something ... at times . . . like a willful 
child ...” His expression changed. He became un¬ 
aware of Grace Fuller’s watchfulness. “I have failed 
to show her anything.” 

When Lilah came in at two o’clock, she found them 
still together, in the library filmed with the smoke of 
cigars and cigarettes and before a fire that had burned 
out. 

She crossed the room swiftly, letting her gold cloak 
slip away from her as the petals of a flower fold back 


THE TIDE 


119 

from a slender stamen. She was dressed in pollen 
yellow with amber ornaments; barbaric ear-rings 
brushed her shoulders. She wore no rings, not liking 
them; her wedding ring had been discarded an hour 
after her wedding. 

“Hello! Still awake? I thought you were sleepy, 
Robert! Who has a cigarette? I came back before 
I wanted to because I had twinges of conscience. I 
thought afterwards, that you might be ill. It was 
foolish of me. I made apologies to the Sinclairs and 
painted a terrible picture—Robert with a fever. 
They wanted me to go on to the Club, so I went. Re¬ 
luctantly! Now don’t you both feel silly? I danced 
with Heifetz. He has eyes like agates set in satin 
cushions. He dances divinely, but I was afraid he 
might scratch one of his famous hands on this girdle 
of mine—the beads are so sharp. He thought me 
quite Austrian, not French. He is coming here with 
that American violinist who made such a hit in Rome 
and has married a pretty American girl when he had 
a choice of titles and millions. It was really awfully 
amusing. Poiret was there, looking us over. He is 
rather like a Bedouin—Barker’s Constantine Madras. 
He thinks American women potential; but they lack 
something the French have. Now you know, both of 
you, that we don’t know how to wear hats; if we’re 
picturesque, we’re not chic , and if we’re chic , we’re 
not picturesque. I’m sick and tired of hearing about 
Cecile Sorel. Poiret raved, too, and there was a little 
Roumanian attache from Washington who declared 
that she is the most beautiful woman in the world. 


120 


the tide 

I can’t see it. She has a wonderful neck, but that 
mouth! And there’s nothing subtle about flamingo- 
pink ostrich feathers in a Roman helmet made out of 
rhinestones. Bordoni is lovelier; she has the most 
provocative feet in the world. Heifetz likes olive 
women with eyebrows ... at least, I think so—he 
danced with one and his expression was like the last 
movement of Debussy’s L’Apres-Midi d’un Fame. 

. . . Another cigarette, Robert. Aren’t you two being 
rather glum? What have you been talking about? 
Me, of course! I suppose you dished me up from 
soup to nuts. Is there anything left of me? Do you 
like me? I’m a trusting soul, to leave you together! 
Not a servant in sight and you two marooned in the 
library, picking my mortal bones. . . . 

She perched on the arm of Robert’s chair and the 
cloak fell to the floor. She was as alive, as vivacious, 
as if the night were only begun. She had an im¬ 
perishable luster, a surface brilliance that was begin¬ 
ning to harden, like the skin of a pearl. . . . 

Lilah dreaded the approach of Spring. Summer 
meant the Point, where she had no one to stand be¬ 
tween Robert and herself except Junius. There had 
been no appreciable abatement of the New York sea¬ 
son; very few people had gone South, since all eyes 
were turning again toward Europe. Lilah suggested 
Paris to Robert, but he was, for once, determined. 
He expected her to go with him, in June, to Maine. 

Lilah had been launched with a certain momentum; 
now she could not stop. She ran from one important 


THE TIDE 


121 


pleasure to another. Her time was taken up by the 
meaningless activities of the young married set, the 
debutantes of an immediate yesterday who were now 
tasting freedom and a characteristic dissipation; mar¬ 
riage seemed to be not a bondage but an excuse for 
license; the manners, and the casual morality of these 
matrons frere the result, they said, of the War. Most 
of them had married in a hurry, but there were no 
signs of leisurely repentance; rather, divorce was 
spoken of across the dinner-table and accomplished 
after breakfast. Speech was reckless, profane and 
satirical; there was nothing left to be shocked at be¬ 
cause everything had been said. Love was always 
possible, but never probable unless tinged, at least, 
with the illicit. Concessions were made to any one 
who had “a line,” and lapses from social grace were 
condoned and even glorified. 

There was, Lilah discovered, a code, astonishing 
to the older generation. But this had always been 
so. The difference lay, not in the code itself, but 
in the mental condition that had produced it. This 
generation had been hurled against the bayonets, into 
the mud-pits and stench holes, the heroisms and piti¬ 
less defeats of war. Brought up to believe in prog¬ 
ress, in their own infallibility and triumph, they had, 
in adolescence, been stripped of their most inestimable 
faith. It was natural that they should scorn both their 
teachers and the untruth they had been fed, as with 
a spoon. They made their own deductions; impatient, 
ironic, and without sentiment, they raced forward. 

The men were more balanced than the women; a 


122 THE TIDE 

preponderance of serious-minded men were intent on 
finding out something, no matter what. Lilah listened 
to much bitter speculation. While they speculated, 
they either drank or danced or, without emotion, ex¬ 
perimented in the flesh. 

Lilah met some strange fish. There were times 
when her over-stimulated mind refused to accept im¬ 
pressions and she saw faces swimming, floating, 
snatched away, reappearing, like the fantastic deni¬ 
zens of an aquarium. The city required that a woman 
should appear impervious to fatigue; Lilah fell into 
the luxurious habit of having her tired face “patted 
into lines of animation at so much an hour. Tilted 
back in a combination barber-chair and operating 
table, she gave herself up to the fingers of a beauty 
specialist. Lilah submitted to hours of manipulation; 
her face was smothered in clay masks, packed in ice, 
slapped, pinched, and stroked. These were her only 
moments of relaxation. At the mercy of the expert, 
her body rested, her mind swam in and out of the 
mazes. At her side, upon a highly antiseptic glass 
table, bottles and jars contained the supposedly mys¬ 
terious ingredients of youth; Lilah believed in their 
advertised potency. Lulled by the touch of soothing 
fingers and the odor of creams, lotions, tonics, herbs, 
sachets, rouges and powders, Lilah spent hours in 
these brocaded salons. Other hours, fixed appoint¬ 
ments rigorously kept, were spent at the hairdressers’, 
where, before a triple mirror, beneath a cluster of 
lights, her vanity was fed by a mannered Frenchman 
who wielded the Marcel irons with a sort of tender- 


THE TIDE 


123 

ness. Her hands, surrendered to a pale girl in black, 
became smooth and pointed, tinted, polished. She 
enjoyed the odor of this establishment—a combina¬ 
tion of violet brilliantine, singed hair and a Gallic 
thrift. 

Early in February her life took a strange turn. She 
went around a corner into a new street. 

She had been invited, significantly, without Robert. 
May Sinclair thought Robert a wet-blanket and had 
said: “Come alone. It’s going to be a bit wild. 
Robert wouldn’t understand. Give him his slippers 
and leave him at home.” 

The Sinclairs lived in a Park Avenue apartment, 
fifteen stories above ground. A columbarium maze of 
small rooms had been transformed, by a judicious 
knocking out of walls, into a stately salon. Upon 
this lofty shelf Mrs. Sinclair lived and entertained, in 
the fashion of modern New York, any one who amused 
her. 

Lilah found the company already there. A man 
sat at the piano, improvising. She recognized Mon¬ 
tague Wilder and his inevitable tumbler of whisky. 
He couldn’t play, he said, unless he was thoroughly 
drunk. Then he played divinely. He looked up as 
Lilah came in and, not pausing, called: “Lilah! 
Lovely Lilah! Dance for us! This is a waltz on a 
poem by von Hofmanstahl. Listen! Isn’t it lovely? 
Dance. Something Viennese! Cupids and garlands, 
hoops and little waists. ...” 

Lilah lifted her arms. Suddenly she felt very gay 


I24 THE TIDE 

and triumphant. She was conscious of people sitting 
in the shadowy corners of the room, watching her. 
She began to waltz. The little square of cloth that 
did for a train got between her feet and she caught 
it up, exposing her ankles to the frank admiration of 
her audience. No one said anything. This was the 
lazy after-dinner hour before vivacity had worked its 
way to the surface. Later, every one would talk at 

once. , 

Lilah said breathlessly: “Mrs. Vernon Castle! 
And waltzed into the arms of Chivers Chew, who was 
the only man in the room on his feet. They whirled 
for a minute (Chew danced abominably) and then 
Lilah sat down beside Wilder. “That was wonderful, 
Montague. But play something serious. Chopin.” 

“For God’s sake, Montague, cut it out,” Chew com¬ 
plained. “I’m blue enough.” 

“Use your mind,” some one advised. “You can do 
anything with your mind.” 

Montague Wilder improvised on the theme “Kalua.” 
Glittering scales ornamented the melody; he took it 
by the hand and led it into the Debussy half-tones, 
so that the South Sea ragtime tune became a wistful 
French song, a thing of strangeness and nuance. His 
left hand reached for the whisky glass without seem¬ 
ing to know what his right hand did, but there was no 
break in the invention of technical feats. Through 
this dissonance and unexpected harmony the familiar 
melody seemed classical, important. “You’re wick- 
edly clever,” Lilah said. 


THE TIDE 


125 

“Wait until I’ve had a quart,” he answered. “I’ll 
play the D-flat waltz in thirds. Rosenthal could do 
it, but no one else ever has.” 

“Who’s here?” Lilah asked. 

“Oh, the Heywoods. Pound, the shipbuilder. He’s 
middle-class English. ‘The wife’ is with him and she’s 
worse. Carey; the Hawaiian Carey. Miss Wagner 
—pronounced with a wag. Putnam Flagg and a girl 
from San Diego who writes. May has never drawn 
such a hand—aces and eights! Why are we here?” 

“Who is Putnam Flagg?” Lilah interrupted. 

“I don’t know.” 

“What is May going to do with us?” 

“The opera. Then back here. And then talk, until 
morning.” 

“Talk?” 

May Sinclair unfolded and rose from a long sofa 
upholstered in taupe velvet. “Come on! ‘Butterfly’!” 

“‘Butterfly’! Good God,” Wilder groaned. 

“Let’s stay here and play, you and I,” Lilah whis¬ 
pered. 

“No, you don’t!” May Sinclair’s clear, high voice 
came between them. “Drink that whisky, Montague, 
and bring Lilah! Farrar’s singing.” 

“Worse and worse,” Montague Wilder said. But 
he rose, and Lilah found her wrap. 

In the elevator she brushed shoulders with a tall 
man who stared at her down his nose. May Sinclair 
never introduced any one. This, Lilah supposed, was 
Putnam Flagg. Afterwards, long afterwards, it used 


126 


THE TIDE 

to amuse her to think of their meeting in a stuffy little 
elevator that slid down fifteen stories while they stared 
at each other. 

He had a curious, rather flat nose, eyes like an ani¬ 
mal and the beautifully modeled full mouth of a satyr. 

They did not speak, but Lilah thought: “I hope 
May will let him come with me.” 

The Sinclair motor waited at the curb, and Lilah 
hung back, pretending to adjust the collar of her wrap. 
She heard Mrs. Sinclair call: “Lilah! Lilah!” With 
a flurry, the writer from San Diego and the elder 
Carey embarked, the Englishman and his wife fol¬ 
lowed and the attendant, closing the door of the lim¬ 
ousine, signaled for Lilah’s little brougham. ... She 
was to have the tall man and Montague Wilder to her- 
self. 

She beckoned to them; the car slipped into the 
stream of downtown traffic upon the heels of May 
Sinclair’s crowded chariot, and again she became con¬ 
scious of the pressure of her shoulder against his. 

“I am Mrs. Peabody,” she explained. 

“Major Flagg,” he answered briefly. 

They did not speak again until a skillful and pre¬ 
carious landing had been made before the Opera. It 
was Montague Wilder’s monologue. He complained 
on the way across town that opera in New York was 
debased, a commercial side-show. There were no 
voices worth mentioning. No one below the peanut 
heaven knew anything about music; tradition was lost 
on the balance of the house, and therefore the singers 
played fast and loose with the scores. He had heard 


THE TIDE 


127 

a distinguished prima donna cheat three times in one 
evening, substituting a b flat for a high c to the rage 
and mortification of Moranzoni; but the audience was 
unaware, so why bother to sing? Galli flatted to her 
heart’s content. Now that Caruso was gone, there 
was no one. No one, that is, save Diaz, who was per¬ 
mitted to sing once or twice a season—it was worth 
going a thousand miles to hear him do the prologue 
of the “Coq d’Or” and the rag-picker in “Louise.” 

But who could sing “Depuis le Jour” since Mary 
had gone to Chicago? Jeritza would snuff out like a 
rocket, in two years, or less. She was too damned 
Teutonic. . . . 

In the lobby, May Sinclair gathered her aces and 
eights and led them around the red velvet corridors 
to her box. She was a tall, blonde, long-waisted 
woman who had reduced from two hundred to one 
hundred and thirty-five pounds in less than a year 
and had had a sort of personal renaissance, a rebirth. 
From a fat placidity, a dowdy gentleness, she had en¬ 
tered upon a willowy emotionalism; she was enor¬ 
mously interested in what she had, for years, surren¬ 
dered because of her sense of the fitness of things. 
She was experimenting; it was no longer ridiculous 
to experiment. She was forty but she was not fat. 

Butterfly’s relatives were retreating before a matter- 
of-fact Pinkerton, sung by Martinelli. Farrar, in a 
nasturtium-red kimono with a metallic obi, her blue- 
black hair a pinwheel of lacquered ornaments, 
crouched before an artificial cherry tree in the fullness 
of unnatural blossoming. Lilah saw the stage, a pool 


128 THE TIDE 

of light, and the two small gesticulating figures, across 
the shoulders of Mrs. Sinclair and the writer from 
San Diego. That music, melting, propitiating, as¬ 
sailed her, like a personal appeal. Bimba, dagli occhi 
pieni di malia — 

If Martinelli would only cut his hair. . . . 

The house was not crowded, but, as always, the 
boxes made a show—poor relatives of the holders, or 
relatives of the poor relatives, or music teachers, or 
God knows who. . . . Lilah had not heard u Butter¬ 
fly” often enough to be bored. But Montague Wilder 
had curled up in the ante-room and had gone sound 
asleep. 

Suddenly Lilah’s eyes turned to Major Flagg. She 
had wanted him to be watching her, and he was. 
Their eyes held. It was a game. His eyes were un¬ 
wavering and yet something kept flickering in them; 
it was as if a shutter opened and closed. Whenever 
she was about to leap into his eyes, he shut her out. 
More than anything she had ever wanted, she wanted 
to get by that barrier, whatever it was, into his eyes. 
Once inside, she could conquer him, but never so long 
as he kept her out. 

She had not spoken to him except to say that she 
was Mrs. Peabody and to receive his polite but non¬ 
committal answer. 

He was winning the game. . . . 

Lilah shrugged her shoulders and turned back to 
the stage, where Pinkerton, feeling carefully behind 
him for the steps, drew Butterfly into the dolce dimora. 
Farrar, abandoned, Carmen in a kimono, swayed for- 


129 


THE TIDE 

ward, lost in ecstasy; her feet, in gold lacquer san¬ 
dals, mounted the steps, slowly, slowly, as her head 
tilted back to that kiss on the threshold. . . . 

“Oh, God,” Montague Wilder said, sitting up, 
disheveled and sleepy. “Puccini! Lilah—let’s go 
back and drink more of May’s Scotch.” 

She shook her head. 

It was no use pretending they had not looked at 
each other like that. 

In the corridor, pacing up and down with Mrs. 
Sinclair, who couldn’t find any one to smile at because 
it was a parade of “loans,” Lilah heard in snatches 
that Putnam Flagg was “queer,” that he had “ideas.” 
He had been gassed and had a bad heart. It made 
Mrs. Sinclair jumpy because at any moment he might 
faint. 

“Talk to him, Lilah, I can’t.” Mrs. Sinclair caught 
sight of old “Rosie” Jackson and shed Lilah. 

Lilah found herself at Flagg’s side. He was too 
tall. She felt little and silly. But more than that 
she was excited, a dangerous, unfamiliar excitement. 
She could not explain it, then, or later. He spoke of 
the opera. He liked it. He liked Farrar. “Because 
she is alive. A woman like that ...” 

“Well?” 

“Magnificent! Not quite feminine.” 

“Do you know her?” 

“No. I shouldn’t want to.” 

“Why?” 

“I hate finding sawdust in dolls.” 

“Perhaps you wouldn’t.” 


i 3 o THE TIDE 

“I might.” He smiled down at her. “And then 
I’d have one less enthusiasm. I can’t do with too 
few! It’s lonely enough as it is. Rows of ’em, prone, 
with the sawdust spilling out of their heads! Leave 
me Farrar, please.” 

After a moment he said: “This is the first opera 
I’ve heard in five years. I’ve been in New Mexico 
for two years. Before that, in France, I didn’t care 
to go. I hope Mrs. Sinclair won’t leave early. I 
want to be in at the death.” 

“Montague Wilder would consider you very un¬ 
sophisticated. He laughs at Puccini, or, as you know, 
he goes to sleep.” 

Flagg seemed for a moment to consider. “I don’t 
dare to laugh at things,” he said presently. “It’s 
dangerous. You begin by laughing at your pet little 
detestations and you wind up by losing your big 
faiths. It doesn’t pay to be too fastidious.” 

“Doesn’t it?” Lilah said lightly. 

He shut her out again. As if embarrassed by hav¬ 
ing made a confidence, he turned his head away. 
People were staring at them and Lilah wondered 
whether she had been recognized. Her photograph, 
taken by a flattering man of title against a background 
of Florentine brocade, had been published broadcast 
in those magazines whose business it is to foster the 
idea that an American society really exists. Lilah 
had discovered that it is not altogether easy to get 
yourself advertised, even though you happened to be 
Mrs. Robert Peabody. But she had taken this hurdle, 
as she took all of them, with alacrity, and it was there- 


THE TIDE 


131 

fore not improbable that this strolling crowd stared 
at her for the reason that the American crowd loves 
its celebrity as the Englishman loves his duke. Ordi¬ 
narily, she would have been content to enjoy the flat¬ 
tery implied by this attention alone, but to-night her 
pleasure was doubled because she particularly wanted 
this man to be aware of her. He could scarcely be 
unaware that she was attracting attention. 

At the box door, Mrs. Sinclair waited with the air 
of being about to sweep them into a net. “We’re 
going on to the Rendezvous after the second act. 
Montague’s fearfully bored and Carey has a Gilda 
Gray complex. I hope you won’t mind, you two.” 

Flagg made a polite if not enthusiastic gesture and 
Lilah, catching his eyes deliberately, permitted her 
own to say: “I’m sorry, for your sake.” 

As they entered the box, he remarked simply: “I 
have a rotten heart and can’t dance. . . . Who is 
Gilda Gray?” 

“She is a lovely, initiated, transplanted savage,” 
Lilah explained, “who dances the hula-hula on Forty- 
fourth Street.” 

Again their eyes held. The lights dimmed; with a 
sigh, a rustle, the great audience faced again the glow¬ 
ing proscenium. Lilah had a curious sensation of 
being isolated, alone, in a crowded emptiness, with 
this man. Life, for the moment, was immeasurably 
suspended. There was a dignity, a beauty about the 
impending, the imminent disaster. She would love 
this man. She could not help herself. She paused, 
amazed, before the strangeness and the splendor of 


i 3 2 THE tide 

that recognition. The moment prolonged itself, until, 
in the fixed and intense meeting of their eyes there 
was mutual declaration. It seemed that they must 
sit thus, strangers, in a shadowy balcony above a pool 
of music, forever. . . . 


VI 


HEN Lilah returned to the Thirty-eighth 



Street house, late that night, it was her in¬ 


clination to avoid any encounter with 


Robert. She hoped that he had fallen asleep. Dis¬ 
missing the servant, Lilah entered the electric elevator, 
another of De Blauvelt’s innovations, and got out on 
the second floor. The door was noisy and as she 
turned toward her room she saw a light flash on in 
Robert’s room across the hall. He called: “Lilah?” 

“Yes,” she said, and paused, holding her breath. 
She ought to go in. But she could not. She felt that 
her excitement had written itself on her face and she 
hated to invent reasons for that animation. She 
wanted most of all to be alone and to see herself, 
clearly, before she went further. Robert might sur¬ 
prise her into saying something before she was ready. 

“I’m tired,” she called out. “Good night!” 

She locked herself into her room, suddenly deter¬ 
mined to have her way. She must deal with this new 
feeling before anything happened to diminish it, to 
mar its shining beauty. Robert expected to be kissed; 
it was a part of the utterly stupid and peremptory 
rite of marriage, devoid of spontaneous affection or 
of that emotion which is led up to, prepared, by word 
and touch. Why did he insist, when he knew that 


i 3 4 THE TIDE 

it was a conventional gesture and could lead to noth¬ 
ing, create nothing, change nothing? She heard his 
hand sliding over the panels of the door, and again he 
called: “Lilah?” 

She saw herself reflected in all the mirrors in an 
attitude of disgust and rebellion and she was struck 
by her loneliness. No one could help her. This was 
a primitive feeling, so powerful that it was all she 
could do not to hurl her dismissal at the closed door. 
What, in a man she loved, would have been lovable, 
in Robert was revolting. 

“Go away/’ she said in a low voice. 

At once he was silent, as if she had struck him 
dead. She listened for the sound of his retreating 
footsteps, but she could hear nothing. He must have 
gone swiftly, silently; or else was still standing there, 
his hand suspended, his gesture arrested by something 
final in her voice. 

She spoke again: “I’m very tired.” 

There was no answer. And slowly she undressed, 
trembling as if there had been an actual disaster. 

She slipped into bed and switched off the light. The 
silence of the room was permeated by a low and con¬ 
tinuous sound, a distant mingling of voices, victori¬ 
ous, hopeless, a vast, removed dissonance. . . . The 
city. 

She got up again and kneeled by an open window. 
There, the sound took form, was less terrifying. The 
street, beneath a moon at the full, was empty, like a 
street in a nightmare. Office buildings were like pyra¬ 
mids in a forest of pyramids, inscrutable, lifeless. 


THE TIDE 


135 

And one tower, higher than the rest, was pierced by 
a loggia, rimmed with moonlight, romantic. 

She tried to piece together the fragmentary happen¬ 
ings of that evening. The idea came to her that per¬ 
haps she had over-estimated Flagg’s interest; her own 
had been immediate, sharp, an emotion more pene¬ 
trating than anything she had experienced. The 
meeting had upset her whole philosophy of conduct; 
she had thought herself safe within the defined circle 
of her material desires; her inner self, what idealists 
were pleased to call her soul, she had believed secure 
against temptation; beauty, in things, was to have 
been enough. And now she saw, dimly, that she had 
stepped outside the circle into a strange territory 
where beauty, to be beauty at all, must be of the 
spirit. 

She recalled their silence in the motor, the brief 
contact of shoulders, an ostentatious indifference 
when, seated at the Rendezvous, their interest had 
either to disguise itself or be subjected to remark. 
Flagg had not danced, but Lilah did, because it was 
expected of her. The writer from San Diego claimed 
Flagg. She was witty and tangibly human, a woman, 
Lilah decided, in daylight. Broad of feature, with a 
tanned skin and careless braids of thick brown hair, 
she had an enviable indifference to what men thought 
of her which assured her their instant, delighted at¬ 
tention. Whenever Flagg laughed Lilah’s heart con¬ 
tracted with something like hate. She had thought 
herself incapable of jealousy. What she felt was 
worse than jealousy; it was a primitive, an atrocious 


136 THE TIDE 

suffering. She had gone on dancing, smiling, but her 
eyes had sought Flagg again and again, had sought, 
across the crowded room blue with smoke and dust, 
confirmation of something she had only glimpsed and 
might have imagined—his head, the short, smooth 
hair, his features, his expression of humorous, sensi¬ 
tive understanding. He leaned a little sideways, to 
catch the ironic comments of the sun-burned lady 
from San Diego, but his eyes never failed to meet 
Lilah’s, to let her in a little way and then, abruptly, 
to shut her out. . . . 

Once, she had found herself alone at the table with 
him. 

“You have shown yourself to me,” he said abruptly 
in a lowered voice, staring away from her at the 
crowd. “Perhaps because of something in me or be¬ 
cause of something that has happened to make you 
careless. No. Don’t interrupt. You are right. We 
are not alike but we are different enough to be dan¬ 
gerous to each other. I am going to be frank with 
you. Nothing could have flattered me more than 
your being aware of me, for now I know that some¬ 
thing I thought had died in me is still alive. But I 
can’t be what you might want me to be. I can’t play 
any game but my own. You see, I have chosen to 
stay alive at the expense of my old enthusiasms— 
and failings. I have only a margin of life. Like that 
chap of Conrad’s, I have an enemy in my breast. I 
must be watchful and I must feel nothing. And here 
you are, commanding me to feel. I haven’t any ex¬ 
istence of my own. I am dedicated to my unstable 


THE TIDE 


137 

heart, fending off reality to spare myself a damnable 
pain that makes me red in the face, sick, unconscious. 
... I haven’t any life of my own. I am as dead as 
dust. I am a man who buys life, day by day, simply 
by sparing his heart. . . . Love is selfish. ... If I 
love you, it will be selfishly. I warn you. I have no 
desire to play the game of hide-and-seek, to dodge 
jealous husbands. I haven’t anything to offer you— 
either money or feeling or security.” 

Lilah had said quickly: “Thank you! You are 
very explicit.” 

A momentary fear passed to leave her trembling. 
She realized that while he was speaking she had lost 
all sense of the crowding dancers, the barbaric throb 
of the music, their publicity. She put up her hand 
to hide what she knew must be an expression of utter 
rage. 

“Even to-day,” she began, in an unsteady voice, 
“when anything is permitted—you dare—I don’t un¬ 
derstand—” 

Suddenly he turned and looked at her. “Even to¬ 
day preliminary skirmishes are ridiculous. I beg 
your pardon. I took it for granted that you were 
experienced enough to hear the truth.” 

They were interrupted by Chivers Chew who bore 
Lilah away without the formality of an apology to 
Flagg; he rose and let Lilah go with the conventional 
reluctance. In Chew’s arms, held too close, Lilah suf¬ 
fered panic. She had no idea what Flagg had meant; 
whether he had laughed at her or whether, without 
question, he wanted her. Whatever he had intended, 


138 THE TIDE 

one thing was certain, the feeling she had wanted to 
avoid was being thrust upon her. The immediate 
future held a great selfishness or a great daring. This 
feeling was bound to assert itself or destroy her. She 
could not be certain that it was, in the romantic sense, 
love. 

She could not, even now, be certain; kneeling in 
the open window with her blank gaze on the city, she 
wondered . . . 

They had not spoken again. She might not see 
him, ever. But that was impossible! She had left 
the party, at one o’clock, to come home alone. Her 
coming had been in the nature of a flight, an escape 
from an intangible danger, a fatal, desirable, disas¬ 
trous happiness. . . . 

She rose, with a sudden impulse to go back. . . . 
They would be at May Sinclair’s apartment, talking, 
drinking, until dawn. . . . 

She switched on the electric light again. Her cloak 
lay across a chair. She threw it over her shoulders, 
thrust her bare feet into the slippers that lay where 
she had kicked them off and opened the door. 

Robert was standing outside, his face curiously 
puckered. “Where on earth are you going?” he de¬ 
manded. 

Lilah said furiously: “Why on earth are you listen¬ 
ing at my door?” 

“I wasn’t listening.” 

He lifted his arms. “I forgot. You spoke to me. 
... I was waiting. . . . Well, by God, I was a fool!” 

Lilah closed the door. Her teeth were chattering. 


THE TIDE 139 

She flung the wrap aside. “Go away. Go away” she 
said. “Go away.” 

It seemed of sudden, vital importance that she 
should be happy. Since there was no certain immor¬ 
tality, temporal happiness was necessary at any cost. 
She had been cheated because she did not love; but 
Robert had loved her, still loved her. He had failed 
because he had not fulfilled the promise of that mo¬ 
ment in the fog. He was like all prosaic lovers; he 
had thought of nothing better to say than: “Poor 
Lilah! Poor little girl.” She had always despised 
pity. She denied all the feminine attributes other 
women used as defensive weapons. She preferred ad¬ 
miration to sympathy; and in this she was unusual; 
most women like to cry against a masculine shoulder. 
Lilah wanted the fullness of success, recognition of 
her strength. 

She went to the telephone and in a cautious voice 
gave Mrs. Sinclair’s number. 

“Lilah!” The high, clear tones came into the re¬ 
ceiver against a confused background of music and 
voices. “I thought you found us dull!” 

“May I come back?” 

“Now?” Then, with a burst of amused laughter: 
“Of course! Come.” 

Lilah called a taxi and dressed hurriedly. From 
her window she saw the car slip down the hill from 
Madison Avenue and the driver, jumping out, glanced 
up. . . . He mustn’t ring! Mustn’t! 

She flew downstairs. Robert’s door was closed. 


i 4 o THE TIDE 

If he heard, he made no attempt, this time, to stop 
her. The house was dimly lighted, muffled, close; 
there was an unreality about the formal arrangement 
of chairs, the stiff, precise folds of curtains and 
draperies, as if no one had ever lived in these rooms 
or passed up and down the stairs. . . . The thought 
crossed Lilah’s mind that she had, after all, failed to 
create a livable home. Her heart hadn’t been in 
it. . . . 

She made violent signals to the chauffeur of the 
taxi: “Don’t ring! Here I am! Take me to four- 
seventy Park.” 

The man gave her a curious look as he shut the 
door. Then she realized that it was three o’clock. 

Mrs. Sinclair’s party was still in progress. The 
formal luxury of the room had been put askew. 
Wilder was at the piano. Carey sat cross-legged on 
a table, singing Hawaiian ditties in a soft, saccharine 
voice. With shut eyes and upcurling lips, he was 
like an elderly Buddha in a dinner-jacket. 

Lilah saw immediately that Flagg was there and 
her heart leaped, but she said, smiling at him: “I’m 
not a bit of a coward. I came back to apologize.” 

They sat down together, unexpectedly embarrassed. 
It was not possible to fence effectively before a room¬ 
ful of people. But Lilah felt that she had committed 
herself. She studied his face, his well-modeled hands. 
He was harder, more mature than Robert; the nature 
of his aloofness was not clear to her. Either he was 
cruel, or he was removed, by the nature of his expe- 


THE TIDE 141 

rience, from ordinary behavior. He said nothing but 
sat with his eyes on the fire which had burned low 
in a shallow hearth of yellow and black marble. May 
Sinclair was flirting, in her intense, experimental fash¬ 
ion, with Chivers Chew. The shipbuilding English¬ 
man and his wife had disappeared. Nearby, stretched 
at full length with her head in Heywood’s lap, the 
writer from San Diego was explaining the hows and 
the whys of the short-story game: 

“It’s perfectly easy. Any boob can do it. All you 
have to know is human nature and God knows human 
nature doesn’t cringe from publicity, these days! All 
of us skin our souls in public. I’m successful be¬ 
cause I skin mine a little closer. I give the public 
naked hearts, as you hand around olives at a picnic 
—on a pickle fork! People are sick and tired of 
flappers. They want 'strong stuff,’ be it pseudo or 
not; heroic love and sacrifice. Divorce has lost its 
novelty. I’ve been writing the most exalted morality- 
tales. . . . You’ll see—in another year skirts will go 
down and manners will go up. It isn’t going to be 
fashionable to lie with your head on a strange gentle¬ 
man’s bony knee—” 

“Then why do you do it?” Heywood demanded, 
not stirring. 

“Because it’s quite roguish in San Diego.” 

“San Diego—where on earth is San Diego?” 

Lilah turned to Flagg. He smiled. “What a lot 
of rubbish! Why do people generalize about taste 
and morals? To-day, when propriety is a vice in 
New York, a cigarette is immoral in San Diego. And 


142 THE TIDE 

if skirts go down in New York, they’ll go up in San 
Diego, because San Diego is always two years behind 
—and what does that prove?” 

He leaned forward, lowered his voice: “Is it de¬ 
cided, then? Are we to go on?” 

Lilah said simply: “Yes.” 

She rose, tossing her cigarette away. She was lan¬ 
guid again; her eyes drooped. She brushed against 
him, but he sat, immovable, his expression guarded. 

“May,” she said, “I don’t like your party. I’m 
going home.” 

“Have a drink,” was the succinct reply. 

Lilah’s hostess did not trouble to rise. And Chivers 
Chew, peering over the back of the sofa with a blurred 
expression said: “Don’t be a grouch, Lilah! We’re 
all danced out. Listen to Carey. He’s on the fiftieth 
verse of the Hawaiian poem in praise of the first Mis¬ 
sionary Carey, who had fifteen wives and sixty-two 
sons. Tune in—there’s a good girl.” 

Flagg followed Lilah into the corridor. His offer 
to accompany her was, in its tempered formality, old- 
fashioned. She could not understand just wherein he 
differed from the men she knew; he was more bold, 
more direct than they, but he seemed devoid of the 
fashionable carelessness which made them, very often, 
insulting. The women were responsible for most of 
it—they let themselves be slapped on the back and 
addressed as “old girl.” 

As they stepped into the elevator they heard Mon¬ 
tague Wilder entering upon the D-flat waltz, in thirds. 


THE TIDE 143 

“The stale hour,” Flagg remarked, as they waited 
on the curb for a night-prowler. With his cane he 
signalled a skulking vehicle that turned out of a side- 
street. A sharp, cool wind whipped Lilah’s cloak; 
the sky was already pale with dawn. But the streets 
were deserted; in pools of light cast by the tall, globed 
arcs, an occasional figure was visible, unreal, moving 
upon strange errands; cars passed, rarely, with a 
smooth purring of tires, bearing shadowy, drooping 
women, and men in the attitude of relaxed satiety. 

Flagg did not speak, and Lilah became conscious of 
his unswerving regard. 

“I don’t understand what’s happened,” she said un¬ 
steadily. “I am not willing—I want happiness. But 
I can’t hurt, too much, some one who has been kind 
to me. I’m selfish. You’ll see. I want—things. 
But this is new. I don’t know. I’m frightened.” 

“Don’t be,” he said. 

He continued to stare at her. He seemed to be 
dreaming, sunk in a reverie. Lilah’s fear deepened. 
If he had touched her, or had spoken, she would have 
thrust him aside with all of her accustomed scorn 
and impatience. But there was something in his si¬ 
lence that was devotional, innocent, almost immaterial. 
She recognized that he was above self, absorbed in 
her. . . . With a shiver, she recalled Robert, at her 
door. . . . 

The taxi swerved and stopped before the Thirty- 
eighth Street house. 

Lilah gave her hand into Flagg’s clasp and as they 
looked again at each other her lips trembled. She 


i 4 4 T H E T I D E 

heard herself asking him to come, as soon as possible; 
then, conscious of a too apparent eagerness, she 
added: “Thursday. I’m fearfully busy.” 

“To-morrow.” 

“No. No. I can’t. Give me a day or two. 
Thursday, at four.” 

At breakfast, Lilah said sweetly: “Was I cross last 
night? I’m sorry.” 

Robert lowered the newspaper. His answer sur¬ 
prised her, but she did not alter her smile that had 
in it a touch of malice. “Cross? No. Why?” 

“I thought perhaps—” 

“I’m going to the Point,” he interrupted. “My 
grandfather isn’t well.” 

“Oh, Robert—” 

“It’s not serious,” he said. And added, with no ap¬ 
parent irony: “I’ll come back!” 

Lilah lowered her eyes to hide her expression. This 
little circumstance, unlooked for, outside her volition 
or her intention, was a part of her unfailing luck. In 
every circumstance, she was triumphant. 

“I’m terribly sorry,” she began. 

“He has a cold. Damned nuisance! Old men 
shouldn’t have colds. He might die. I’m fond of 
him. And besides, he holds the business together. 
An enormous amount of correspondence goes to the 
Point. In the end, he makes all the important deci¬ 
sions, defines policies—his preferences are respected. 
If he should die, I would have to take his place. But 
there are other reasons why I don’t want him to die.” 


THE TIDE 145 

“Shall I go?” Lilah asked. “I will. But wouldn’t 
Grace be more useful?” 

“He doesn’t need a nurse. He’s lonely. If you 
will come with me, and wear your prettiest dresses 
and perhaps play poker with him—he will get well. 
Old people sometimes die because they are ignored. 
They live alone until they lose the sense of their own 
reality; they sort of—vanish.” 

Lilah said briefly: “Let me see his letter.” 

Junius Peabody’s fine, careful writing with the curi¬ 
ous, looped s’s covered half a sheet of stationery. He 
said simply that he would be glad of company since 
he was confined to his bed and feverish. “They won’t 
let me up, confound them!” 

“He’s not very ill,” Lilah remarked. “You go, and 
if I’m really needed, wire me.” She added: “You’ll 
be happy, because you love the country. And I have 
a great deal to do. Oh, unimportant things! But if 
I’m to go away in June, I won’t have more than just 
enough time to get ready.” 

When Robert said: “Very well,” she had the feel¬ 
ing that she was safe. The immediate future held, 
not the necessity for speaking a dangerous truth, but 
an adventure, delectable, mysterious, exciting. 

Suddenly gracious, she gave her hand to Robert. 
“I’ll miss you, cross old Bobsie,” she said sweetly. 

The next two weeks were as exciting as she could 
have wished. 

She heard from Robert that his grandfather was 
better but that the spaniel had canker of the ear. 


i 4 6 THE TIDE 

“It’s terrible. She moans like a human being and 
shakes her head and tries to get her hind foot into 
her ear. The vet came—that old fellow from Bidde- 
ford—and operated. Last night I sat up until four 
o’clock putting ice on her nose and pouring stuff into 
her ear. She wouldn’t sleep and kept looking at me. 
I’ve been away too long. Edwin shut her head in a 
door because she wanted to get into the warm kitchen 
and lie under the stove. My God, why can’t people 
understand that animals are human? I’ll never like 
Edwin again. It makes me sick to look at him. If 
I had a son, I’d act this way, only worse. The silver 
bitch is the only son I’ve ever had. . . . I’ve been 
thinking over you and me. I have failed with you 
and I don’t know why. No one could love you more 
than I do. But I suffer in my love, and that isn’t 
right—love ought not to betray, but it seems to. Will 
you help me? Perhaps you know what I mean. If 
we had a son, there would be no complications. Last 
night when I sat there giving that pup pieces of ice 
that melted as if I’d put them on a red-hot stove, I 
saw a good many things clearly. The ice ran over 
my hand and up my arm and ruined my shirt, and 
at the risk of your hating me I’ll tell you that I cried 
like a baby and my tears ruined my tie. When I 
got through I looked like the sole survivor of the 
Flood. (You write Biblical words with capitals, don’t 
you?) And, as I was saying, certain things were sort 
of washed clean or clear, or both. If I could only 
put my thoughts down on paper so that you would 
understand! I know that if I could explain myself 


THE TIDE 147 

to you, you’d come, quick! Love shouldn’t be a sac¬ 
rifice; it should be a service. That goes down easily 
on paper, but it took hours to bubble up out of my 
unconscious. And another thing, it doesn’t pay to 
go running around looking for new material to work 
with. What you have at hand is usually workable, 
if you are patient enough. Success is, after all, mak¬ 
ing what you have into a decent sort of achievement. 
The people who fail are the ones who kick about never 
having had a chance. We all have a chance. I could 
be specific, only I won’t. I am offering myself to 
you as a lump of clay for your fashioning. You might 
make something of me—the life-size statue of a happy 
man. Isn’t it worth trying?” 

Lilah did not know what to answer; she postponed 
answering, and, after a while, forgot. The issue was 
not pressing. To placate Robert, she sent a wire: 
“Love to you both. Lilah.” 

These two weeks were exclusively her own. She 
did not want to serve love or to use the material at 
hand. She hated smug, decent, stereotyped domes¬ 
ticity. Other women could spend year after year with 
the details of a home and children; it was unthink¬ 
able that she should surrender to monotony. She 
must live to the full; she was willing, she assured 
herself, to take both the reward and the punishment. 
The penalty, however, was too remote to be con¬ 
sidered. 

Putnam Flagg had been a professor before he be¬ 
came a major. He preferred the first title to the 
second, since he declared that he was not, by nature, 


i 4 8 THE TIDE 

a soldier. He disapproved of the advantage offered 
by rank and insignia to men who might be disposed 
to bully their inferiors, but he approved of awards 
that carried with them nothing but recognition of 
work well done. As a teacher and a scientist, he had 
known abstract adventure; no war could equal the 
hazards of research. Yet his ability had forced him 
into the most terrible branch of warfare and, as an 
expert in the use of poison-gas, he had had a dose of 
his own medicine. This struck him as an altogether 
exquisite justice; he had been an unwilling but an 
intelligent servant of his country—once convinced of 
his duty he had used all of his knowledge, and had, 
temporarily, laid aside his scruples. He despised war, 
but he also despised despotism. He was one of the 
few thinkers whose faith had not been shaken by the 
tragedy; rather, he emerged from it with an even 
deeper belief in man’s progress. Flagg was convinced 
that society had gone too far to turn back; surrender, 
discouragement, meant annihilation; the battle must 
be fought to the end. 

He did not shrink from facts; he believed that the 
esthetic imagination would be supplanted by the 
scientific imagination. There was no limit to the au¬ 
dacity of man; no limit to what he might dare, what 
he might do. . . . 

Flagg was to go back to his university in the Au¬ 
tumn. Lilah got a very definite picture of a small 
city, a group of Gothic buildings unhallowed by age, 
the plain, a wide river, brown polished, slow and re¬ 
sistless . . . Flagg would have a house “on the 


T H E T I D E 149 

campus” and a small laboratory of his own. Three 
times a week, in a Gothic room, before an un-Gothic 
audience of farmers' sons and business men in em¬ 
bryo, he would lecture. His “subject” he told her, 
was zoology. Lilah shuddered. She could not un¬ 
derstand Mendelian heredity, but she had understood 
what Junius Peabody said about the adult being in 
some manner contained within the germ. She could 
not see what was gained, exactly, by knowing. ... In 
the end, you always stumbled upon God, and the in¬ 
scrutable beginnings. 

“We must make certain,” Flagg said, “that there 
is not a God beyond God. Perhaps our conception is 
childish.” 

Lilah put her hand over his mouth. “Let's not 
talk about it. I'm more interested in your college, 
your guinea pigs and rabbits and test tubes.” 

His smile was mocking. “Guinea pigs and God,” 
he remarked. Suddenly he caught her hands. “I 
think I love you because you are beautiful. There's 
nothing else to love! Yet I love you! Do you care? 
Or are you playing with me?” 

Lilah had not, so far, committed herself. They 
were spending an hour before her fire, sharing the 
French sofa that had been too small for Robert. 
Flagg's touch frightened her. 

She had been so happy. A week had passed like a 
day; it had contained the essence of experience. If 
she let herself love, she must face exile in a western 
university town—but that was impossible; Flagg 
would not be spared because he happened to be an 


I5 o THE tide 

unusual and valuable man. She would have to wait, 
and divorce Robert. She saw a year, two years, of 
postponement, poverty again, criticism, ugliness, the 
battle to justify passion. If she did not love, there 
was Robert, and this, and this— A house! Or 
Flagg might die. . . . 

Her hands trembled in his, but she was obstinately 
silent. Outside, a heavy rain fell, obliterating, for 
the moment, the rumble of traffic in Madison Avenue. 
A servant, or Grace Fuller, might come in and find 
her hands in this man’s hands, her face, with a look 
of lost desire, turned up to his. ... If she kissed 
him, she knew, she would be powerless to turn back 
to the facile little enthusiasms of her life. If she 
didn’t kiss him, she would be safe, forever, in her 
rooms frescoed by Shawhan and decorated by De 
Blauvelt, in her chosen interests, in the perfunctory 
embraces of her marriage. 

On the other hand, there was happiness. Happi¬ 
ness, at that moment, seemed terrible, a dark under¬ 
taking, something forbidden and murderous. It in¬ 
volved Robert. The intensity of that moment in the 
fog, when she had promised Robert love, was nothing 
more than a betrayal. She must not promise again, 
and fail. 

Somehow this feeling was different. She was 
swayed by more than her own part in the drama; for 
once she turned out from herself toward another hu¬ 
man being. Pity had no part in her love for Flagg; 
his affliction was not evident; she had learned to ac¬ 
cept his guarded manner as part of his personality. 


THE TIDE 


151 

His appearance—that length and leanness and the 
pagan outlines of his face—stirred her. His eyes were 
brown, without sparkle, lifted, under heavy lids, like 
the eyes of a cat. “You belong in mythology,” she 
said. He was not ready to her hand; she felt always 
that he might turn suddenly, with a feline indiffer¬ 
ence, and walk away from her. He seemed always to 
be amused by her artificialities, yet delighted, as if 
he had come upon an unusually winning little mouse. 

She wanted to hate him, because it would be more 
comfortable to hate than to love him. Without quite 
knowing what she did, but staring straight into his 
eyes with a look full of questioning, she leaned for¬ 
ward until their lips met. 

He whispered: “Lilah!” and caught her close to 
him. When she heard his heart beating, she realized 
what she had done. She could not draw away. . . . 
This was the reality of giving. She must keep it. . . . 
How beautiful! How final! She could not turn 
back, undo what she had done, or cease to feel what 
she was feeling. . . . Helpless, she leaned against 
him, hardly conscious of his lips on her forehead, her 
hair. He kept on whispering: “Lilah! Lilah!” She 
had not expected him to be so gentle. When finally 
she opened her eyes and pushed him away, she saw 
that he was suffering. His face was flushed, trans¬ 
formed, made ugly and pathetic by pain. The feel¬ 
ing of death was there, tangible, sickening. . . . His 
eyes were wide open, and in them an expression of 
surprise deepened into horror. 

Lilah cried: “Your heart!” 


IS2 THE TIDE 

He nodded and, loosening the grasp of her hands, 
tried to stand up. 

“Don’t 1 Stay where you are. I’ll get help. ...” 

He said in a surprisingly loud voice: “No! I’ll be 
all right. Wait. ...” 

His struggle was short and sharp. He seemed to 
be trying, over and over again, to start the interrupted 
action of his heart. With every failure, fear and 
amazement made more horrible the expression of his 
wide-open eyes. Lilah watched. Once she cried out. 
“You mustn’t! For my sake!” Flagg tried to smile, 
to reassure her. He seemed to be listening. And the 
blood left his face, drained out, like a tide. His flesh 
was blue-white, livid. The physical agony seemed to 
waste him. Soon, Lilah thought, he would fall out of 
her arms. But he held himself upright with an effort, 
meeting the enemy again and again, and it was as if 
he held himself precariously on the rim of space. 

Suddenly, for no appreciable reason, it was over. 
He slipped sideways, back upon the sofa, and his eyes 
closed. “I’m all right. . . . Only sorry. . . . Per¬ 
haps you know, now, how I love you. ...” 

A servant was coming into the room. With a 
wrenching effort, Lilah steadied her voice and said: 
“What time is it?” 

“Six o’clock, madam.” 

“Is Miss Fuller in the library?” 

“Yes, madam.” 

“Ask her to come here.” 

Grace Fuller came at once. Between them, they 
made Flagg comfortable; he lay with his arm under 


THE TIDE 153 

his head, apparently asleep. With deft, impersonal 
touches, Grace Fuller ascertained his pulse, wiped off 
his forehead, which was drenched with sweat, gave 
him water. She said nothing. Lilah did not meet 
her eyes. Her own feelings were confused; now that 
Flagg was safe, she could sense to the full her triumph; 
but how fragile a thing happiness had become—it de¬ 
pended on this man’s living! And it was doubtful 
whether he could resist the fatal pressure of the in¬ 
evitable emotion. He lay exhausted, pallid, one 
hand hanging limply with fingers that brushed the 
floor. 

Lilah turned her face away, afraid that Grace 
Fuller might see her expression, the mingling of pity 
and glory, of fear and expectancy. 

“Is he all right? Will he die?” 

“No,” Grace Fuller said. 

At that, Flagg opened his eyes. “Die? Of course 
not! This happens very often. I shall be all right in 
half a second. I’m sorry and ashamed. Your kind¬ 
ness ...” 

He sat up. 

Lilah’s gesture toward him was immediate; before 
she tempered its meaning, Grace Fuller had seen. 
But the nurse remained with her cool fingers on 
Flagg’s wrist. Only her lips twisted as if, before that 
revelation, she wanted to laugh. She helped Flagg 
to his feet. 

“Good of you,” he said. 

He bowed, apologized again and with a glance at 
Lilah, unreadable, went out and quickly downstairs. 


i 5 4 THE TIDE 

“That’s war,” Grace Fuller remarked dryly. 
“Thousands like him, trying to ” 

Lilah brushed her aside. “I’m going with him! 
He’s ill. . . . Let me go, I tell you. ...” 

Grace Fuller caught Lilah’s arm, held her. “Lilah, 
don’t be a fool.” 

Lilah cried wildly: “Let me go! I must. . . . He’s 
ill. . . . Oh, damn you!” 

In a white fury she struck, clawed, but Grace 
Fuller pinioned her arms, shook her, twisted her back, 
away from the door. 

“Hove him! I love him! I’m not ashamed. Tell 
Robert! Tell every one! I want it over.” 

“You’re hysterical,” Grace Fuller said. 

Lilah ceased struggling. For an appalling moment 
she thought her own heart had stopped. She sagged 
against Grace Fuller’s shoulder; while a dark tide of 
feeling rose, submerged her, receded again. 

“I love him,” she repeated in a dull voice. “That’s 
all. What can I say, or do?” 

She straightened and pushed Grace Fuller away. 
“Now, you two can dance on my grave.” 


VII 


I N HER own room again, Lilah went to the tele¬ 
phone and called Flagg at his apartment. A 
man’s voice answered that Major Flagg was not 

well. 

“I know,” Lilah said impatiently. “I am Mrs. Pea¬ 
body. I must speak to him.” 

“I am Major Flagg’s physician,” was the reply, in 
a tone Lilah thought a shade too dr^, “He cannot 
speak to any one.” He went on to explain that Major 
Flagg was not seriously ill, but that he must, for a 
fortnight, be absolutely quiet. 

“I saw him less than an hour ago,” Lilah insisted. 
“He seemed quite all right.” 

The physician, with some acerbity, added that Ma¬ 
jor Flagg had had another attack on his way home. 
He was in bed and must stay there, undisturbed. . . . 
“Thank you,” Lilah said. 

She turned away from the instrument with a fright¬ 
ened gesture. She couldn’t see him! That meant 
she must meet disaster alone; she had, irrevocably, 
committed herself to Grace Fuller. No matter what 
happened to Flagg, whether he lived or died, she had 
lost Robert. . . . 

She began, unsteadily, to dress for dinner. The 
Sinclairs, the lissome May and her husband, were 
coming, and, as a balance to their unimportant mil- 
155 


156 THE TIDE 

lions, Lilah had invited the American violinist and his 
curtly intelligent bride, a woman who might amuse the 
Sinclairs because she belonged to one of the richest 
families in the country. In the Sinclairs, two for¬ 
tunes had come together, and the only enthusiasm 
they had in common was money. Their interest was 
not vulgar, it was, rather, fraternal. They enjoyed 
communion with the rare, kindred blessed. 

Lilah thought: “I’ve got to pretend. But none of 
this is mine—” 

In her chemise, with her hair tumbled on her shoul¬ 
ders, she realized that she had not called her maid. 
When she did, it was with a certain humility that she 
said: “I am very late.” 

The maid said: “Yes, m’am,” and went into the 
bathroom to start the tub. She was a pretty mulatto, 
a soft, slight creature with the gait of an enchantress. 
Lilah had never liked her because she had the air of 
knowing everything, and the suave, the velvet quality 
of her St. Kitt’s English gave her a certain distinc¬ 
tion. 

Lilah wondered: “Could she have heard that row 
with Grace?” 

She studied the girl’s back, her unhurried, expert 
gestures, and when she straightened suddenly, and 
turned, Lilah was embarrassed. 

“The bath’s ready, m’am.” 

A shower of violet crystals sparkled in the tub, and 
as Lilah stirred them, testing the scented water with 
the tips of her fingers, she had a sharp memory of 
tin tubs and basins in Swiss pensions. . . . And, wilL 





THE TIDE 157 

fully, she recalled the lovers of Lorelay. ... She 
glanced down at herself, silver-white, with little 
bubbles, like quicksilver, climbing over her skin, 
bursting on the surface of the water. How lovely her 
thighs were, indented, slim, young. . . . And her 
knees, her feet. . . . She could go to Lorelay with 
Flagg and send for that famous, that notorious, tin 
tub without shame. She was like Manet’s Olympe, 
not classical but adorable. Flagg would understand 
if she mentioned Lorelay and Olympe. Robert would 
not; or, if he did, he would be shocked. . . . 

“Seven o’clock, m’am.” 

“Coming!” 

In a robe of dark blue silk, thrown over a shift of 
cream chiffon, she faced her mirror, while the mulatto 
girl dressed her hair. Her panic had been replaced 
by exuberance. She felt certain that she could handle 
Grace. Flagg would say, do, nothing. She was safe 
for a fortnight, with both love and beauty. . . . 

“Draw it back, away from my ears. Not fluffy! 
Here, give me the comb! I’ve told you so many 
times.” 

“Sorry, m’am.” 

That pretty, petulant face, honey-colored, was re¬ 
flected in the triple mirror in an unguarded moment 
and Lilah caught a flash of dislike and contempt from 
eyes that were usually turned aside. 

“Have you a sweetheart?” Lilah asked, twisting her 
hair into the Second Empire contour she affected. 

“Yes, m’am.” 

“Does he love you?” 


i5 8 THE TIDE 

The mulatto shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t 
know. Men are funny. He’s a pretty man, but he 
gambles. He spends all my money. He’s a sailor.” 

“Get me the black dress. I’ll want the white cameo 
ear-rings. No! Not there! In the leather box. 
Stupid! Stupid! I’m late.” 

On her way downstairs, where the financial rating 
of the violinist’s wife was just dawning on the Sin¬ 
clairs, Lilah stopped to speak to Grace Fuller. 

“Grace?” 

“Yes.” Grace Fuller was having her own dinner, 
in the fashion of nursery governesses, on a card-table 
before the fire. 

“You’ve had dinner?” 

“I’m having it—just.” 

Lilah came into the room. She was very lovely. 
She wore no jewelry, save the heavy white cameos, 
set in gold, that dangled from her ears. She gave 
no hint of her actual years; Grace Fuller thought, in 
a moment of judgment, that she was like the city, a 
creation of that energy which is all nerves. There 
was something ageless in the slim, provocative, sex¬ 
less body, thrust a little forward, the carriage of her 
head, with its dense weight of hair coiled under, 
her lips, painted like an Oriental’s, not scarlet, but 
magenta. She said lightly: “Am I all right? Will 
I do?” 

“Beautifully,” Grace said, flushing. 

Lilah bent down, and Grace became conscious of the 
odor of sandalwood. “Dear old Grace; I’m absolutely 
in your hands.” 


THE TIDE 159 

“If you mean that I am not to say anything to 
Robert,” Grace replied, “I won’t. Things like this 
are too personal, too terrible, for an outsider—” 

“I will know what to say when I see Robert,” Lilah 
interrupted. Her manner became, abruptly, sharp 
and decisive. “Or whether to say anything at all.” 
She added, almost carelessly: “My feeling may have 
been pity.” 

Grace said nothing. The flush had mounted until 
her face burned, as if the shame of Lilah’s confession 
were hers. For the first time she had had a glimpse 
of Lilah’s weakness—she saw her exposed to defeat; 
the revelation was, somehow, humiliating. Grace 
Fuller turned her eyes away. 

“I think you can trust me,” she said. And, in¬ 
stantly, she hated herself for not having struck. Now 
it was too late. 

Lilah went downstairs. 

Her guests were already launched. Fred Sinclair 
was staring at the violinist’s wife with the satisfaction 
of an entomologist who has happened upon a singu¬ 
larly rare insect. Mrs. Sinclair was testing her charm 
upon an unyielding surface; the violinist was more 
a priest than an artist. Lilah found him parrying 
Mrs. Sinclair’s sentimental thrusts with his own pe¬ 
culiar irony. He despised any one who wasted his 
time. Lilah trembled for the success of her dinner. 
She said deftly that in Robert’s absence she depended 
perhaps too much on her friends; she suggested lone¬ 
liness and a peculiar sensitiveness to “atmospheres.” 
The violinist promptly pocketed his ill-temper and his 


160 THE TIDE 

bride surrendered to Mr. Sinclair’s butterfly-on-a-pin 
manner. On the way in to dinner, she graciously 
stated the size of her fortune, Mr. Sinclair’s collection 
thereby gaining a precious specimen. 

Lilah had counted on Flagg as a sixth at the table. 
In her failure to warn the servants, a place had been 
set and she had to explain. Immediately, the silver 
and glass were removed, the chair taken away, but 
Flagg’s name had interested the violinist. 

“I’m sorry. I’ve always wanted to know him. 
What a thundering crime—a man like that, gassed! 
There could be no survival of the fittest in such war¬ 
fare.” 

He spoke with bitterness of the destruction of the 
world’s best brains and of the inevitable hiatus—there 
would be a wide break in both science and art. As 
it was, the few who were left carried a double bur¬ 
den; their responsibility to the past and to the gen¬ 
eration that had had no expression save in death. 
Flagg was one of the men the world could not spare. 
The indignity of his suffering now— 

The violinist broke off: “I know it isn’t considered 
polite to talk about the war. In Europe, people 
aren’t so squeamish. It happened. It may happen 
again.” 

Mrs. Sinclair thought not. 

Lilah smiled at the violence of his retort; he had 
served on the Russian front, had seen the Kolchak 
debacle, and, before that, had flown over Triest and 
Pola, Villach and Wien, with d’Annunzio. Mrs. Sin¬ 
clair listened to his tirade with a pained expression, 


THE TIDE 161 

as if he were being intentionally disagreeable. Why 
on earth talk about war when you could talk about 
the theaters, reducing and prohibition—there were 
enough interesting things. . . . 

Lilah pictured Mrs. Sinclair in her Long Island 
house, a Tudor mansion set down in a vast wilder¬ 
ness of new rose-gardens upon a featureless plain, not 
unadorned but unhallowed. Her security, established 
when she was a child, had been deepened by the pos¬ 
session of this enormous stone house, a fortress against 
chance or change; in rooms as cold, as cheerless, as 
echoing as a series of railway terminals, she seemed 
removed from those things which happen to all of us; 
the walls were too thick and too new to admit de¬ 
feat. Lilah wondered what Mrs. Sinclair would do 
if the armies the violinist invoked should trample the 
Sinclair flower-beds and pepper the Tudor walls with 
machine-gun bullets. . . . Send for the Swiss butler, 
probably, and die, game and unconvinced, sipping a 
dry Martini. . . . Lilah could not decide which 
counted for more—the indifference of the Sinclairs or 
the awareness of the violinist; they believed that the 
future was negligible, the present amusing, which suf¬ 
ficed; he believed that the world could be saved only 
by incredible effort, a supreme, unending, unified in¬ 
tention. . . . 

He complained that there was no flame in human¬ 
ity—too much water had been thrown on it, perhaps. 
Life was drab unless kept at an artificial, stimulated 
pitch; pleasure, purchased, had taken the place of 
faith. . . . 


162 THE TIDE 

Mrs. Sinclair, bending her willowy body from the 
waist, whispered to Lilah: “My dear—what’s this I 
hear about you and Putnam Flagg? It wouldn’t do 
for you—it wouldn’t do at all! He’s penniless. Now, 
don’t look innocent. A dozen people have seen you 
together, lunching at tea rooms and meeting in art 
galleries . . . it’s awfully touching, but no bne be¬ 
lieves these naive—” 

“May,” her husband said. 

“Oh, yes.” She turned again to the violinist. 
“Faith. You were saying—?” 

In the morning Flagg telephoned. “Did you think 
that I would pay any attention to a doctor’s orders? 
I want to see you.” 

His voice unnerved Lilah. Every time it was like 
the first time—a breathless recognition, a summons, 
alarming and unavoidable, to a self beyond self. “He 
was very severe—” Suddenly her voice broke. 
Through a flood of frightened tears, she stammered: 
“Oh, my darling! My darling!” 

Flagg said gravely: “Lilah—if I could comfort 
you. . . . Will you get your hat and come over here? 
It’s quite respectable. There’s a nurse, who will, if 
I ask her, leave us alone. Or, if you prefer, she will 
stay in the room.” 

“I can’t. It isn’t possible! I might be seen.” 

“And what if you are? Before long every one who 
knows you will know that you love me. Things like 
this can’t be gone at politely. When you break up a 
marriage, it’s war. It’s got to be war. And neither 


THE TIDE 163 

of us can afford to be afraid, now, or later. You un¬ 
derstand, don’t you?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then come!” 

“But—” 

He was silent, and Lilah knew that the issue was 
important. If she refused, she would in all probabil¬ 
ity never see Flagg again. 

“You’re better?” 

“Yes. . . . Take a taxi. You know the number. 
These are bachelor quarters, but I’ve prepared the 
elevator man—he’ll bring you up. . . . I’ll be a lot 
better when I see you.” 

Lilah thought: “Don’t be squeamish. All the 
women you know do this sort of thing.” 

Aloud, she said: “I’ll come at once.” 

She dressed with a romantic attention to detail. 
She chose a small black hat with an air of intrigue 
and sophistication; a veil that seemed to shut her 
beauty away so that her ey&s were remote, enticing 
beneath the rakish brim of the tricorn. 

A streak of conventionality, a dislike of criticism, 
warred with her eagerness to see Flagg. She sent 
her motor away and walked westward to the Avenue, 
then uptown. Lilah wanted to have her own way but 
to be considered above reproach. The possibility of 
scandal frightened her; she thought: “I’m not a 
coward! Only, to be torn to bits and thrown to the 
yellow journals to make a middle-class holiday! A 
Sunday supplement martyr! It’s so stupid. ... So 
ugly. . . . Robert and Junius, all of us—” With a 


164 THE TIDE 

shock of relief, she thought: ‘Tm glad I haven’t a 

child.” 

Still, she might have. Even now, she might have! 
Robert’s child. Even now, as she went to Flagg. But 
that would be a loathsome trick of destiny; it couldn’t 
be! Couldn’t. ... She didn’t deserve punishment; 
not such a punishment! God thought of people— 
there must be some sort of divine justice. Now that 
she had love— But suppose, as Flagg had said, that 
there were a God beyond God, and no one watching, 
no one caring. . . . 

She found herself standing before a shop window, 
and was conscious of the blurred reflection of herself, 
the fashionable outline of a woman of the world. 
There was security, insurance against a detestable, a 
repugnant reality, in the fact of her worldliness. Like 
Mrs. Sinclair, she was a product of civilization, a 
vital, representative image of society, removed, by 
her unquestioned right to her position, from the blind 
attacks of destiny. She was powerful because she 
was instructed. She was indomitable because she was 
intelligent. If there was a God beyond a God she 
could reach Him. She would not take punishment— 
need not— 

She shook herself, tried to stare at the things in 
the window—a Florentine chair, more graceful than 
most of them; a Persian bowl; a Flemish chest; a 
Luini; a strip of ecclesiastical velvet; a pair of Water¬ 
ford glass chandeliers. . . . 

Her thoughts flew back to the house she had just 
left. She had wanted glass chandeliers for her bed- 


THE TIDE 165 

room—one on either side of the narrow mantel, to 
balance the truuteciu. These were delightful—a 
shower of crystals, delicate as cobwebs after a rain. 
They were, probably, expensive. . . . 

Lilah hesitated. Her room was lifeless, almost 
gloomy; it needed such a sparkle as these little chan¬ 
deliers would give. . . . She saw herself, moving 
about in a bland, crystal light. . . . 

She went into the shop, conscious, as always, nowa¬ 
days, of her ability to reach out and take what she 
wanted. The chandeliers were displayed by a col¬ 
lector who flattered her by making no comments. 
That they were genuine, and rare, was beyond 
question. 

‘Til take them.” 

“Very well.” 

“Mrs. Robert Peabody.” 

“I know. We had the pleasure of importing some 
Venetian glass—” 

Lilah interrupted: “Be sure to send a man to hang 
the chandeliers.” 

“Certainly. To-morrow.” 

She went out again, somehow relieved, as if she had 
come unscathed through a hurricane. Buying things 
always gave her a sense of security. Silly of her, to 
have been afraid of something that could never hap¬ 
pen to her . . . never . . . 

Flagg lived in the West Fifties, not far from the 
noisy “L” track where trains passed like steel comets, 
clattering, insistent. ... An old man in an alpaca 


!66 THE TIDE 

jacket admitted her to a narrow hallway and to a slow, 
dingy elevator operated by a cable. His face was 
scarlet; there seemed to have been an explosion of 
veins beneath the surface of the skin. . . . Without 
glancing at Lilah, he let the cable slip through his 
hands, as if, in his dejection and ennui, there could 
be no end to this ascent. Lilah thought: “How easy, 
after all.” He let her out and indicated a door “to 
the left. Push the button.” 

Lilah saw the name “Flagg.” There was a rustle 
behind the door and it opened sharply. A woman in 
starched linen said: “Mrs. Peabody? Major Flagg 
is waiting. This way, please.” 

Lilah had expected him to be in bed. But he rose 
from an arm-chair and smiled down at her. 

“You’re better?” 

“Yes . . . Now! You were a long time getting 
here.” 

“I walked.” 

“Miss Peterson—Mrs. Peabody.” 

The starched woman, who was, to Lilah, as feature¬ 
less as an egg, bowed, murmured something and went 
out, closing the door. 

“Don’t be afraid,” Flagg said. “I won’t keel over 
again. I’ll give you tea presently. But now I want 
to talk to you. You lovely thing! She can’t hear— 
there’s a corridor, and then my bedroom, where she’s 
sitting. Shall I send her away?” 

“No. No.” Lilah shook her head. “It’s bad 
enough—my being here.” 

He leaned forward and caught her hands, smiling. 


THE TIDE 167 

He drew off her gloves, turned her palms over and 
kissed them. His gestures were slow but there was 
nothing of Robert’s hesitancy about him; his eyes 
flew over her. She felt again that penetrating delight 
in him, and because he did not expect pity, her pity 
made her tremble; there was a maternal, a brooding 
pain in her heart. Without speaking, she went back 
to her eager search for the things she loved, enu¬ 
merated them—the line of his cheek, the peculiar, 
sharp modelling of his lips, his lids, a way his hair 
had of growing, like a sort of fur, short, thick, luster¬ 
less—she wanted to stroke it, but she didn’t. Some¬ 
how, he was still a stranger whose presence excited 
and embarrassed her. She wondered if any one had 
ever known him; whether she would ever know him. 
Robert was like a plant that recoils at the touch of a 
prying finger. But Flagg was like an animal; he had 
the grace, the aloofness of an animal, the eyes of an 
animal. She was almost afraid to touch him. His 
absorption flattered her, as if a creature of the woods 
had strayed close to rub against her and purr—a big 
cat. Without stirring, she let him kiss her fingers, 
one after the other. And she felt again that sense 
of a moment prolonged, suspended, until she lost 
reality. 

Her glance went beyond him to the room. She had 
never thought of him as living anywhere. ... A 
shabby, slovenly room. Rows of white shelves were 
weighted with books. There were no photographs. 
Only a small bronze of a woman and a jar filled with 
pipes. . . . 


l6 8 THE TIDE 

“This isn’t my place,” he said, glancing up quickly. 
“It belongs to a man I knew in France, who’s broke. 
He loves books, and I’ve had a feast. ...” 

His eyes deepened and there came into them that 
look of a satyr, mischievous and sensual. She wanted 
to kiss him, but she held herself away. Something 
told her that there would be no going back after to- 
day; he would not grant her a reprieve. 

“I’m sorry,” he began, “for what I said yesterday. 
In time, you’ll love love—not the idea, but the thing 
itself. That’s what I’m waiting for. When it comes 
to you, so that you understand it—its beauty and its 
penalty—you will lose yourself. And then you will 
be exquisite.” 

“I love you,” she insisted, “now.” 

He shook his head. 

He relinquished her hands and, crossing the room, 
filled and lighted a pipe. Then he asked ^abruptly: 
“What are you going to tell your husband?” 

“I don’t know.” Catching her breath, she evaded 
him: “Must I tell him anything?” 

He did not answer. His expression was mocking. 
And angrily Lilah cried: “It isn’t easy! For you, 
yes! But for me—to break with a man who loves 
me and who doesn’t suspect—” 

“Oh. He loves you. I didn’t know that. I had 
hoped that he didn’t. Are you sure he does?” 

“Of course! It will kill him. He trusts me.” 

“You haven’t betrayed him!” Flagg said sharply. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Love is never a betrayal. It’s the truth! I am 


THE TIDE 169 

convinced that it is a sin to deny love, under any cir¬ 
cumstances, for any reason—to live with one man and 
love another is unmoral, ugly, inexcusable. To live 
with one woman and love another is to betray them 
both. I am not arguing on the side of promiscuous¬ 
ness. I despise filth. But there is, after all, a defi¬ 
nite standard. A responsibility—to the emotion it¬ 
self. There’s your obligation! Only, the world won’t 
recognize it. . . . You’ve got to be sure—dead cer¬ 
tain—that what you feel justifies what you do.” 

“You’re putting it up to me, then?” 

He came over and kneeled beside her. He was 
asking something. His body pressed against her 
knees. His hands were supplicating. For the first 
time he was humble, but more than ever insistent; 
life itself, demanding that she say yes or no, that she 
take or leave, give or refuse. In spite of herself, she 
touched his hair, and with a terrifying sense of being 
lost, slipped forward into his arms. 

“I’ll tell him, simply, that I love you.” 

“When?” 

She struggled back, away from him again. But 
Flagg remained on his knees, no longer a suppliant; 
stubbornly, he repeated: “When?” 

“When he comes back—next week.” 

She added, with a flash of disdain: “You might at 
least be sorry for him!” She put out her hand quickly 
and caught his. “I didn’t mean that! I hurt every¬ 
body. Don’t let me hurt you!” 

Flagg laughed. “I don’t let myself be hurt.” 

What he thought was: “If she cares for me, I can 


i 7 o THE TIDE 

hurt her—that’s my weapon, and she knows it.” He 
got up and went to the window, stood there, smoking, 
his back turned. He waited with admirable restraint 
for Lilah to speak again. Behind him, she was abso¬ 
lutely silent. The sun had gone. The room was 
fading into the gray shadows of late afternoon, re¬ 
treating, dimming, like a blurred photograph. Flagg 
kept his eyes on the street; his senses were aware of 
her; he had no comfort in her presence, but he wanted 
her there. Suddenly, she was close to him, soft, 
propitiating. She put her arms around him, pressed 
her face against his back and they stood, in silence, 
for a long time. Flagg no longer saw the city; that 
slate-gray twilight seemed to envelope them both, to 
isolate them. And he had a deep pity for himself and 
for her. What should be so simple, so natural, so 
uncomplicated, would be raveled and frayed and tar¬ 
nished. . . . Between this moment and anything like 
the realization of happiness, there would be a struggle 
of egos—rebellion, shocked pride, jealousy, in con¬ 
flict. Before he could show himself to her and lose 
himself in her loveliness, both of them would suffer. 
And for what? Because life was so confounded com¬ 
plicated—no passion could be single, perfect, but must 
be linked up to other passions, an endless tangle of 
little, petty feelings—like lichens on a tree. The 
growth was hindered, the sap cut off so that the blos¬ 
soms withered and the whole plant, tree and parasite, 
came down into the dust, choked to death. . . . 

“Are you sure we’re right?” Lilah asked. “I’ve 
got to be sure! Isn’t it selfish to be happy?” 


THE TIDE 171 

Flagg answered that to be unhappy was the worst 
sort of selfishness. For centuries the world had been 
in the grip of a superstitious fear of acknowledged 
happiness, as if being contented with one’s lot were 
an indication of alliance with the devil. If you sang, 
in old Salem, you were hanged for a witch. “But to¬ 
day, if you sing, you are selfish! And it amounts 
to the same thing—the world has its fingers 
crossed. ...” 

Flagg asked, without turning: “Have you ever loved 
your husband, Lilah?” 

Lilah pressed against him. “Don’t ask me, now, 
to say. ... A moment. . . . Perhaps, yes. But not 
like this! I am perfectly willing to divorce him.” 

Flagg wanted to know what reasons she would give. 
She said impatiently: “Why—I want a divorce! 
Isn’t that enough? Such things are arranged. Nowa¬ 
days, you don’t have to give reasons, do you?” 

Flagg answered that he would prefer that she allow 
Robert to bring suit; the defection, such as it was, 
was hers; she had tired of her bargain; she had broken 
her word; she had found compensation. If any one 
was to blame, she was. . . . Lilah interrupted: 
“You’re mad! It would ruin me! It is accepted, 
usual, for men to take the public blame for these 
things—every one understands. It isn’t serious. 
Don’t you know—you silly—idealist—that in New 
York a man can arrange an adulterous affair by sim¬ 
ply hiring a woman, a room and a witness? I know 
decent men, respectable men, who have done it, not 
once, but several times. Like vaccination, it doesn’t 


I72 THE TIDE 

always take. My darling, you don’t want me talked 
about. ... And it would be so funny. . . . Robert, 
in silk pajamas, entertaining a chorus girl.” 

“You and I, in love—and your husband, caught with 
a hired adulteress in a rotten hotel, for your sake! 
What cheap irony! Such things are damned ugly. 
You and I will take our medicine, Lilah. Or we’ll 
renounce, now, what might be so fine. If you re afraid, 
say so.” 

After a moment, Lilah said, “I’m not afraid. 

She drew away. A knock at the door was followed, 
discreetly, by a professional inquiry: “You are feel¬ 
ing better, Major Flagg?” And that starched, 
rustling presence entered, carrying a glass. With a 
gesture of rebellion, funny because it was unconscious, 
Flagg took the mixture and drank it. 

“You’re talking too much,” the nurse said. With 
another crackle of starched skirts, she moved from 
lamp to lamp and the room came into sharp outline. 
The slovenly carpet and worn chairs, a frayed scarf 
on the table . . . 

‘Til go,” Lilah said quickly. 

“Hang the doctor!” Flagg exploded. “I beg your 
pardon, Miss Peterson—but doctors don’t always un¬ 
derstand.” 

She took the empty glass from him, shrugging her 
shoulders. And the door closed upon her with a dis¬ 
approving bang. 

“I must go,” Lilah said again. “I must. If any¬ 
thing should happen to you—” 

Flagg made her sit down. He made her remove 


THE TIDE 


i73 

the concealing veil and the little black hat. He began 
to take the pins out of her hair, but, laughing, she 
stopped him. She could not, now, imagine that he 
had ever been ill; a mood of playfulness had followed 
his rebellion; he was curiously like a young animal 
again, lost in his delight in her. He was lovable, will¬ 
ful; she stayed because he wanted it. It was hard 
to refuse him anything. And she couldn’t see that 
her being there hurt him—he had forgotten his enemy 
in his discovery of Lilah. Sitting on the floor with 
his arm thrown across her knees, he talked about him¬ 
self. Himself, as a little boy. As an almost grown 
boy. As a young man. It was as if he wanted her 
to share everything, all in a moment; as if he could 
make her see the whole pattern of his life, so that he 
would never be alone again. Lilah could feel herself 
change, relent, bend down to him with a lovely tender¬ 
ness. It was what she had always wanted to be, the 
way she had wanted to feel, only that no one had let 
her be herself. People had allowed her to be hard 
and bright and dominating! Now she was the woman 
she might have been. The simplest things he said 
touched her. She had no desire to ridicule, to hurt 
him. She wanted him to want her, to need her, to 
get closer and closer to her heart. 

“I wish I had seen you when you were a little boy,’ 7 
she said. 

“I was a sort of flat face and terribly earnest. 
From the beginning, before I could reason, I wanted 
to know about God. I couldn’t believe. And the 
harder they tried to make me believe, the more stub- 


i 7 4 THE TIDE 

born I was. God was unimaginable. They sent me 
to Sunday school, where I sat with my underlip stick¬ 
ing out, denying God with my muscular system— 
braced against acceptance. I remember that this re¬ 
fusal made me, in my own eyes, an outcast. I thought 
of myself as the loneliest and wickedest child on the 
crust of the globe. But I believed only what I could 
see, touch or smell.” He shook his head. “And I 
never got a whiff of God! I remember that one day 
a sort of evangelist came to the Sunday school. He 
asked all the little boys and girls who believed in God 
to stand up. I sat where I was, burning with shame. 
He leveled at me a shouting and frothing, invective, 
hate and threats of damnation—eternal. And how I 
loathed God! When he got through he asked all the 
little boys and girls who didn’t believe in God to stand 
up, and I stood up, alone. . . . 

“Aren’t kids everlastingly funny? I hadn’t an 
ounce of prevarication in me; I told the truth, always, 
until I was a grown man, when I learned that there 
are times when the truth hurts. Then I drew in my 
claws. I make velvet paws nowadays. But that 
doesn’t affect my honesty—I am deadly honest with 
myself.” 

Lilah wondered whether he could feel her shivering 
with delight in being near him, whether he saw how 
her eyes looked at him. She could never go back to 
Robert. She could never again pretend. It was go¬ 
ing to be hard. It was going to hurt her to strip her¬ 
self naked of pretense and fight for this new, this 
strange and wonderful raiment. 


THE TIDE i 75 

“Did you ever change,” she asked unsteadily, “about 
God?” 

He was launched again. He told her about his 
student days in Germany—how he had gone back, 
patiently, to the sources. His days of pessimism. 
His romantic year. A period of mysticism. A fright¬ 
ened, at first tentative groping through the mazes of 
science. Then, something like a personal conviction, 
emerging. . . . He began to shake off support and to 
stand alone, almost against his will, for to stand alone 
was a responsibility. It forever removed him from 
the sensuous, happy, careless self he had wanted to be 
and demanded that he face facts, cold, brutal, un¬ 
adorned and make of them what he could. God came 
to him out of these facts—not the God he had refused 
to believe in—a vastly different— 

He made her see, somehow, why he was not afraid 
of pain or death, and why he was reconciled. He 
hadn’t much longer—but why should he have longer? 
Only to love her. To make her happy, if that was 
what she wanted. 

“I didn’t know you could care like this. But since 
you do—” 

She still trembled; he could not help but see what 
she was feeling. The thing that hurt her now was 
that he would have to know how little and selfish she 
had been. The self she had to offer him was inade¬ 
quate. Her magic was tawdry, like cheap spangles 
on a dancer’s skirt. Her beauty was painted on. The 
reality, the real Lilah had nothing to give him. And 
some day, when he had stopped loving her technique, 


i7 6 THE TIDE 

he would look for her art, and find nothing, only fear 
and an ugly desire to keep him, at all costs. She saw 
herself, in a sort of contorted and nightmarish vision, 
pleading with him; she saw his indifference no, his 
recognition—crushing her down. It wasn’t Robert 
and Junius, scandal, that she was afraid of; it was 
not having Flagg. That was the most terrible thing 
—to be alone again, inventing enthusiasms, because 
the reason for being was not there. 

This was what Robert had meant. 

“You’re not listening,” Flagg said. 

“I am. I am.” 

“I changed,” he went on, from what beginning 
Lilah could not guess, “as every one changed. And 
like every one else, I saw freedom as the most desir¬ 
able end, gaining it all important. Only that I dif¬ 
fered from most in that I didn’t want freedom for 
personal reasons. I’ve always been singularly free 
of the crooked, inherited notions that hold men back. 
But a freedom that releases the mental power of hu¬ 
manity—I can’t make you understand; I’ve only the 
vaguest notion myself! But I see that if we don’t 
adapt ourselves, we’ll disappear from the earth. We 
don’t need web feet or fluffy little wings or snouts, yet 
we do need an entirely new sort of mind. And the 
old way of thinking has got to be pitched out, for¬ 
gotten.” 

He clasped her hands, tight, between both of his. 
“But we can’t pitch it out all at once! The social 
wheel is still revolving, although the engine has been 
smashed—it is carried forward by its own momentum, 


THE TIDE 177 

down-hill—a few hundred years of coasting! The 
survivors will look back at us as we look back at the 
Neanderthal ape—that’s how fast we’re going. . . . 
In the meantime, here we are, you and I, trying to 
conform to the decencies.” 

“Are we?” Lilah asked. In spite of herself, she 
laughed. “I don’t think it’s decent, exactly, to cheat 
Robert. If we’re being honest . . . 

He interrupted: “Lilah, have you stopped to think 
about me?” 

“Why, yes.” 

“Aren’t you thinking about yourself?” 

She shook her head. 

He insisted: “Do you know what I want? What 
I dream of? Hours of sunshine. Hours of perfectly 
imbecile happiness, lying on a green hill with my head 
in your lap, watching the clouds go over. Must we 
wait? It isn’t so far to Spring. Can’t we go some¬ 
where—I know a town in Connecticut, off the tourist 
track, where we’d be let alone. In April, the frogs 
sing at dusk, and the air is moist, cool, full of little 
gnats that dance as the sun goes down. I used to go 
there, years ago, to watch things grow. A marvelous 
season, Lilah. There’s a stir, actual, in the soil, and 
those prying, green fingers come through. . . . Sup¬ 
pose you and I were there to watch it together? I 
stayed at a farmhouse. We could go there. The 
apple orchard—if it hasn’t changed, and God forbid! 
—is deep with grass. And our room would be under 
the eaves. ...” 

“You mustn’t talk like this!” 


THE TIDE 


178 

“Why not?” 

“You mustn’t.” 

“Does it hurt you? Tell me I” 

“Yes.” 

“Then I know I’m right. You’ve got to come to 
me as soon as you’ve told your husband. It isn’t fair 
to take from him what you don’t deserve—that house, 
and these clothes and all your ease and luxury! It 
doesn’t belong to you! After to-day, I’ll hate every 
hour you spend there. I want you to give back 
everything he’s given you. I’m not jealous, only I 
believe in value received.” 

Lilah felt like a runner. Breathlessly, she dodged 
this obstacle. “You wouldn’t expect Robert to bar¬ 
gain?” 

“I’m not thinking of Robert. I’m thinking of you. 
What I want you to be. If you love me, you’ll come 
to me, free, not all tangled up in another man’s pos¬ 
sessions.” 

She pushed him away. 

“I’ve got to go.” 

“Not yet. It’s only six o’clock.” 

“But it’s dark. What will that nurse think?” 

“I’m all right. I only want you.” 

“I know. But some day you may have too much 
of me.” 

“Stay.” 

She got up and he stood close, pleading. Lilah 
was afraid, with that same delicious fear. Now, she 
wanted to hide her trembling from him, to ward off 
what must happen if he guessed the extent, the danger, 


THE TIDE 


179 

of her surrender. She began to fasten her veil, her 
arms, in tight, black sleeves, upraised; Putnam Flagg 
watched her, and, characteristically, avoided, at that 
moment, any caress. When she glanced up, he said: 
“Very charming. What a minx you are! An artist. 
I admire you inordinately, if for nothing more than 
your gift of putting me off! 

Suddenly she clung to him. “Tell me the truth. 
Are you going to get well?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Is it terrible—the pain?” 

“Bad enough. As if a hand squeezed, here, harder 
and harder. I could die, if I’d let myself. Only I 
won’t.” 

“What does the doctor say?” 

“Nothing. He’s used to bad hearts.” 

“I hate doctors. They’re beasts! I hate suffering. 
I hate bodies.” She beat with her palms against his 
breast. “It’s terrible. Terrible! That you should 
suffer so! And we stand here, talking about houses 
and clothes and my owing something to Robert. 
When I only owe myself to you, now and forever.” 

They kissed. They trembled against each other. 
And Lilah had never known such giving. He said: 
“The world’s full of ugliness. It needn’t be, perhaps. 
But it is. We’ll have to face this pain of mine along 
with the rest. . . . Now I’ll let you go.” 

She went out into the street again. No one she 
knew was, at the moment, passing. She turned East, 
facing a cold wind. Her figure passed in and out of 
the squares and rounds of light cast by shop windows 


180 THE TIDE 

and street lamps, hurrying, bent a little forward. Her 
thoughts were hurrying, hurrying, ahead of her, toward 
the Spring, a dusk when frogs would sing and gnats 
dance, and she would lie against Flagg, holding the 
pain away with her two arms, her lips, her love. . . . 


VIII 


I ILAH woke again to that certainty. . . . 

She opened her eyes. Familiar things came 
into focus, were, inexplicably, unreal. She had 
the impression of waking in a strange room. Cir¬ 
cumstance had changed the very outlines of accepted 
facts. At once her mind began the chase interrupted 
by sleep; unleashed, her thoughts darted down con¬ 
fused paths, circled, doubled, stopped aghast. 

She leaned on her elbow and examined her arms, 
her hands. She could not associate her hands with 
herself. They might have belonged to another body. 
This certainty had in some mysterious way deprived 
her of herself. Her consciousness was separate; it 
was pain and fear. 

She fell back on the pillows and pressed her fingers 
against her eyes. She must get hold of herself. Do 
something. Other women had had children. She 
wouldn’t die. In a year it would be over and she 
could go back. . . . The acceptance of that thought 
was like a trickle of ice through her veins. 

If she had loved Robert. . . . 

Back again! Her thoughts were mad, erratic, 
feverish. She could not control them, or bring order 
out of chaos. 

Sitting up with a violent gesture, she saw that it 
181 


182 the TIDE 

was past nine o’clock. She had, then, slept. Ex¬ 
traordinary! That she could sleep, that the tired 
body was stronger than the will! She had not wanted 
to sleep or to lose for an instant her watchfulness. 
Now, she felt, she had surrendered to this fact. In 
sleep, she had been stamped by nature with acqui¬ 
escence. 

She had been running away from herself. For a 
week, in crowded theaters, restaurants and drawing¬ 
rooms dedicated to forgetfulness, she had let herself 
be swept forward on the current. For hours at a 
time, she had forgotten, had postponed remembering. 
As if there were no reef ahead, no shattering of the 
frail craft that had carried her so far toward disaster. 
In moments of waiting, it had returned, always like 
a thin, icy trickle, down through her brain to her 
heart. 

She must do something. 

She half rose, but before she could disguise her 
dishevelment, the scars left by tears, the door opened 
and the mulatto came in, moving furtively as if to 
cover her curiosity. Lilah, for the first time, had the 
feeling that she was trapped, humiliated, her pride 
leveled by a tragedy shared by all women—this yel¬ 
low girl, herself! She felt contempt. Some women 
sacrificed themselves with a smile to the inevitable, 
or concealed their wretchedness beneath an air of su¬ 
periority, as if a thing so usual, so inexorable, so out¬ 
side themselves, were a matter for congratulation. 
Other women seemed to be ordained—an order of 
motherhood; but they were never lovers, wives; they 


THE TIDE 183 

tended the flame of race, kept it burning. God knew 
why any one should willingly add a soul to a world 
where there were already too many souls, too much 
suffering. Better to let humanity dwindle, thousand 
by thousand, until the last man staggered to his knees 
and died and the earth was left once more to the 
forests, to animals, to storm and sunlight, unrecorded, 
eternal. 

The maid, lifting the blinds, remarked that Miss 
Fuller had been waiting for half an hour. 

“Ask her to come up. And I shall want breakfast 
here.” 

“Yes, m’am.” 

Grace Fuller came, bringing, as always, the morn¬ 
ing’s mail. Her fringe was curled, not a hair out of 
place. And across the pallor of her cheeks, rouge 
showed like veining on a leaf. 

From the bed, Lilah asked: “Anything amusing? 
I overslept.” 

Grace Fuller put the letters within reach of Lilah’s 
hand, on the coverlet. Without preface, she said: 
“I’m sorry, Lilah. I can’t stay, go on—I thought I 
ought to tell you. I’ve registered and to-morrow I 
take a case.” A faint smile twisted her lips as she 
added: “A hopeless case.” 

Lilah glanced at the letters. Suddenly she tossed 
them aside. “You needn’t leave, unless you want to. 
I’m going to have a baby.” 

She sat up, pushing the hair back from her fore¬ 
head, straining it back violently. Her eyes were 
heavy. There was no trace of beauty in her face; 


i8 4 THE TIDE 

she was, for the moment, old. ‘Tm going to have a 

baby,” she repeated in a dull voice. 

Her head went down between her knees. She heard 
Grace Fuller saying: “Lilah. Lilah! I’m glad for 
you! This will change everything. Wait until your 
heart accepts—I know what it does to women. I’ve 
watched. You’ll forget the other, come back to 
Robert, in gratitude.” 

Lilah held her breath. Her revolt and her hate 
were ponderable; she felt the weight of them across 
her back; her body huddled; she tried to flatten her¬ 
self out, to escape. Her hair fell forward and she 
caught at the thick strands with her teeth. Now, she 
knew, it was inevitable. She jerked away from 
Grace’s hands, flung herself aside. 

“I’ll never change,” she cried. “Never.. This 
won’t make me different. I’m myself. I will be. 
It’s something I’ve got to stand. But I’ll keep my¬ 
self away from it. I’ve always resented being a 
woman. Gross. Ugly. Unfair. ...” 

She sat up again. “Tell that girl to see that the 
cook doesn’t ruin the eggs. I want a decent break¬ 
fast.” 

At eleven o’clock Lilah was seated in the outer 
office of a physician who was secure in the possession 
of a fashionable patronage. 

The room was quiet, almost bare, and in chairs 
ranged against the wall, ten or twelve women were 
waiting. Now and then a door opened and a woman 
in white, with eyeglasses and a cap elaborately 


THE TIDE 


185 

starched and folded, beckoned to one or the other. 
These patients, Lilah noticed, never reentered the ante¬ 
room, but were ushered out another way, perhaps to 
keep the tide of despair from meeting the tide of hope. 
Other women, arriving, took the vacated chairs. A 
table covered with neat stacks of magazines offered 
an escape from curious eyes; there was a discreet, a 
constant turning of pages. Behind them, expressions 
were guarded, indefinable. Lilah sought duplication 
of her own sensations. Her face, she decided, must 
be as expressionless as the others. It was as if, at 
a prearranged signal, these women had become anony¬ 
mous, featureless. Only when the door opened and 
the capped woman beckoned, there was a flash of ex¬ 
citement, of dread, of something forced and desper¬ 
ately unwilling. . . . Time and again the door opened 
and closed. 

When Lilah heard her name, repeated three times 
because she had withdrawn so far into herself, she 
followed the nurse with a sort of arrogance, an indif¬ 
ference to the outcome. Inwardly, she felt again that 
sense of acquiescence, of surrender to a ruthless in¬ 
quisitor. 

The inner office was large, paneled. At a desk be¬ 
tween two tall windows draped with brown velvet, the 
doctor allowed himself the advantage of turning his 
back to the light. Lilah saw him in silhouette—not 
the traditional physician, bearded and purposefully 
benign; a business man clipped, concise, scientific. 
To him she was no more than a name, a number. His 
manner had in it a trace of the impatience of the 


186 THE TIDE 

normal man who has had to deal with the delicate 
and unstable emotional balance of sick women. He 
was not jovial; he was not even polite. His dry ques¬ 
tions, spoken with an accent of amusement, irritated 
Lilah. She snapped back at him. She had always 
been healthy; she had had a healthy contempt for 
illness; people were sick because they were stupid, 
or victims, like Flagg, of accident. She had thought 
of herself as immune, outside suffering and the ugly, 
wearisome details of suffering. . . . She had time, 
while he questioned her, to notice the elaborate sim¬ 
plicity of his settings; he received his patients in a 
room reminiscent of little drawing-rooms at Fontaine¬ 
bleau. A pretty, red-haired girl took Lilah’s answers 
in short-hand. Lilah resented this girl’s presence. 
The whole proceeding was degrading, like a public 
scandal. 

Lilah fixed the physician with an unwavering gaze. 
She had expected him, for a large fee, to rid her of 
this tormenting suspicion. But she had not expected 
him to uncover her fear, subject it to Hogarthian rec¬ 
ords in short-hand. . . . Marriage a la Mode filed 
away in a card-index cabinet. . . . 

She wished, now, that she had stayed away. 

In her motor, still quivering under that professional 
irony, a confirmation which had stripped her of ar¬ 
rogance, she looked out at the city with, again, that 
tormenting sense of the unreality of familiar things. 
People hurrying, laughing, meeting, waiting on the 
curbs for the tide of traffic to pass—Lilah was hurt 


THE TIDE 


187 

by their indifference to her tragedy. There was no 
such thing as a common, a shared, suffering. No one, 
not even Flagg, could comprehend. She saw a group 
of people familiar to her, Chivers Chew with three 
women, standing before a florist’s window in animated 
conversation. Their security, their pleasure, seemed 
as remote as dumb-show within a lighted proscenium. 
And Lilah’s melancholy was shot across by a pang of 
jealousy. 

The mulatto met her with the announcement that 
Major Flagg had telephoned repeatedly. 

Lilah said in an indifferent voice: “Pack my things. 
I’m going to Maine to-night. Ask Elliott to wire Mr. 
Peabody. And tell him to get a stateroom. If Ma¬ 
jor Flagg calls again, you may say that I have left 
town.” 

March came in, blustering, with a buoyant race 
of large, white clouds and a wind that ruffled the 
swollen streams and spread steel-colored fans across 
the purple-blue of the sea. The air was sweet with 
the odor of wet earth. Willow sprouts showed silver- 
gray in the ditches. In the woods and hollows patches 
of brown snow melted in the sun. Trailing sprays of 
waxen arbutus lifted the pine-needles and fallen leaves, 
thrust them up and aside. And always the wind bil¬ 
lowed and tumbled over the brown hills, the soaked 
fields, the noisy, awakened forests. 

There was a stir in the earth, after the long still¬ 
ness of winter. 

In a short skirt, a jacket of fur, hatless, Lilah turned 


i88 


THE TIDE 

away from the sea and walked inland. A cane Robert 
had given her, of Malacca, mounted in amber, swung 
from her hand. She could not abide the sea, the 
dunes, the beach brushed with swift eddies of blown 
sand. A boisterous sea was strong medicine for the 
spirit. It was too bright, too alive; it had a ruthless 
virility that frightened her. If only she had been 
free enough, brave enough, to brace herself in the 
shifting, stinging sands, to breast the wind, to take 
great swallows of it into her lungs, to fill her body 
with it, to laugh at it! Because she was a coward, 
she preferred the woods, where, in a chill shadow, in 
a sort of calm beneath the brittle crackle of bending 
boughs above, she was safe from nature itself. She 
walked in a void, her thoughts held in abeyance, like 
hounds on a leash. 

She had told Robert immediately of his good for¬ 
tune. Something warned her not to express, just then, 
her own dissatisfaction. She noticed a difference in 
him; his desire for her was no longer humble; it had 
become definitely material and possessive, concrete. 
His happiness only added to her own inner tumult. 
He guessed nothing of what went on in her mind, her 
heart. He was happy. So must she be! He had 
never heard Flagg’s name. He did not guess what 
had happened, what she had felt. She was infinitely 
removed from him; she could even be sorry for him. 

Robert behaved as she supposed all men behaved 
under the circumstances. He became both dictatorial 
and tender. She was shielded from draughts, as¬ 
sisted up and down stairs; he ran after her with shawls 



THE TIDE 189 

and wraps; she became the object of his unwavering, 
worshipful attention; his blue eyes, round, expres¬ 
sionless and innocent, followed every move she made. 
“For heaven’s sake, Robert, leave me alone. I’m 
quite all right. I won’t break.” And he would say 
absent-mindedly: “I’m sorry.” The next instant his 
arm would be around her waist. It was clear that he 
realized nothing. ... Some day he must know that 
he had been making a fool of himself. Her physical 
presence, this child, were his. Her feeling, all that 
made her desirable, belonged to Flagg. Without 
Flagg, she was valueless, like a counterfeit coin. 
Robert was insufferable because he could not see. 

To escape him, the barrier of protective, almost 
primitive tenderness he had built around her, she fol¬ 
lowed the bridle paths through the woods. She 
wanted to ride but Robert objected. There were two 
saddle horses in the stable, a roan and a chestnut, 
good English horses full of mettle that turned rakish 
eyes on Lilah whenever she went to their stalls. 
“They’ve been boxed up all winter,” Robert said. 
“They’re mad to run. But the ground’s soft. They 
won’t feel a saddle until the end of April.” He added: 
“We may have more snow. This is a false Spring. 

Whenever Robert touched her, Lilah had an im¬ 
pression of herself tamed and savage, a dangerous 
restraint, a hanging on beyond the powers of endur¬ 
ance. 

She had not written Flagg. That soft St. Kitt’s 
voice with its accent of mockery had told him that 
Mrs. Peabody was “out of town.” No more. She 


I 9 0 THE TIDE 

had not seen him since that day in his rooms, when 
she had promised him. . . . Now she was gone. He 
would believe that she had lost courage, had fled from 
facts. So she had. . . . She could not face such facts 
as had assailed her, beaten her down, overwhelmed 
her. He would despise her. Or else he would fol¬ 
low and question her. . . . She dreaded every day 
that held this possibility. It would be like Flagg to 
get at the truth, whether or not he hurt her or hurt 
himself. 

Men were selfish. Flagg, like the rest. She was 
being destroyed by the selfish love of these three men, 
Junius, Robert, Flagg. 

Junius had said simply, at Robert’s announcement: 
“I’m glad. There will be some one, a Peabody, to 
appreciate the Moselle.” Later, to Lilah, he had 
added: “I wish you were happy, Lilah.” Irritated, 
she moved away, and he followed, put his thin, 
withered hand on her arm. “I don’t pretend to un¬ 
derstand your generation. But I can read certain 
human sign-posts. If you can’t talk to me, to whom 
can you talk?” 

She faced him with a stony expression. “If Robert 
could read sign-posts,” she said, “I wouldn’t be here. 
He wouldn’t want me.” 

Junius Peabody’s look changed and Lilah realized 
that she had touched his pride. After a moment, dur¬ 
ing which he brushed his mustache with that large, 
cambric handkerchief scented faintly with Cologne 
water, he said: “I won’t argue. Your remark was in 
bad taste. ... I don’t give a snap of my finger for 


THE TIDE 


191 

Robert. He hasn’t the qualities I admire; the things 
I began he seems unable to finish*. Or else he doesn’t 
care, which is the disease at the core of society to¬ 
day. You don’t care, any of you, about anything out¬ 
side yourselves. ... I believe I warned you, in the 
beginning, of what might happen?” 

Lilah ignored the implied question. “I’m here,” 
she said briefly. 

“Is duty, too, out of fashion?” he asked with an 
ironic smile. 

“Yes,” she answered. “When it is discharged un¬ 
willingly. When it gets in the way of—” 

“Of what?” 

“Being yourself.” 

Junius Peabody shrugged his shoulders. “What 
will the world be like when each one of us looks out 
for himself? We will be at the mercy of such disci¬ 
plined creatures as the army ant. I can’t see that 
you gain by being what you term ‘yourself.’ You 
aren’t happier than the women of my day, who were 
what their husbands expected of them. ... I am 
willing, however, to be instructed ...” 

He broke off and stared through the window at the 
flashing sea. “The Forsythe’s girl, Marian, spent the 
holidays at home. She used to come over here quite 
often. At first, because she came on skiis across the 
hills and arrived as rosy as a snow apple, I enjoyed 
her visits. Later, I dreaded them. At seventeen, she 
has the knowledge and the vocabulary of a roue. She 
had learned more badness at a girls’ school in New 
York than I knew at thirty, or forty. She smoked, 


192 THE TIDE 

of course. She would sit where you are sitting and 
light one cigarette from another. And she tossed the 
ends away with the gesture of a longshoreman. She 
was an excellent shot. . . . Externals. ... So I 
thought. But the thing went deeper. She was 
clever. She had reasoned herself out of responsibil¬ 
ity and I could find no flaw in her arguments. . . . 
When she had gone I would sit for hours, depressed, 
frightened. That she used a lipstick, not skillfully, 
is certainly a symbol—of what, I am not certain. I 
would have said that she was going to the devil. . . . 
She had a sort of brusque contempt for love, as I un¬ 
derstand it; yet her whole appeal was to sex. Her 
attitudes—initiated, purposeful—were inviting. Love 
would fail. Marriage would fail. She not only ex¬ 
pected to have a lover, she behaved as if such experi¬ 
ments were inevitable. She liked me, at eighty-four, 
because, she said, I was a ‘sport/ What she meant 
was that I gave her cigarettes and whisky whenever 
she came here. She was bored, and, I am certain, 
not happy. Something has been damaged in these 
young people; their imagination . . . ” 

Lilah said: “I wouldn’t be too complacent about 
the past, if I were you. There were girls like Marian 
Forsythe in Victoria’s day—they fainted for the same 
reason the modern flapper shows her legs.” 

He laughed and Lilah, stooping quickly, kissed the 
top of his head, where the hair, snow white, showed 
a pink parting. “I love to quarrel with you. . . . 
You aren’t to worry about me. I’m twenty-seven, 
twenty-eight, almost. I love some one Robert doesn’t 


THE TIDE 


193 

know, has never heard of. You said I would. I do. 
It happened the way that wind out there comes up in 
the Spring, scattering everything, waking things up, 
changing the face of the world. I don’t know what 
I’m going to do. Take him, of course. But not 
now.” 

Junius Peabody’s face had gone a little gray; be¬ 
neath the sweep of white mustaches, his lips trembled. 
Lilah saw that he was too old, too worn, to stand the 
shock of violent circumstances. He said nothing. 
His unsteady hands groped for hers, patting them, 
stroking them. Suddenly Lilah loved him, because 
he seemed to understand her. 

Robert wanted her to see his spaniels. “It’s a 
small thing to do for me, Lilah.” It was, invariably, 
either too cold or too windy or too damp to cross the 
“greenery” to the kennels. Lilah found excuses, be¬ 
cause to subscribe to an enthusiasm of Robert’s was 
to encourage him, and it was more stimulating to test 
his devotion by inventing subtle rebuffs. The ques¬ 
tion of the spaniels came up repeatedly; their an¬ 
tagonism swung to it like a weather vane; it became 
the focus of his desire to subjugate her and of her 
desire to torment him. There was no other ven¬ 
geance; Lilah found comfort in blaming Robert for 
her loss. “I don’t like spaniels.” Robert winced and 
said desperately: “But they’re fine little chaps! You 
can’t help liking them.” Lilah knew that Robert’s 
pups fetched extravagant prices and that a glass case 
in the kennels contained a dozen blue rosettes dear 


THE TIDE 


194 

to Robert’s heart. She finally inspected the trophies 
and the dogs. It would not do to be surly. But she 
managed, by an expression, a smile, a reservation, to 
make Robert feel that the whole business was childish, 
useless and absurd. 

April came, and still there was no snow. 

It was customary at the Point to send one of the 
stable men to the postoffice, ten miles distant, every 
day at noon. The mail was brought in a leather 
pouch and emptied upon a table in the hall. Lilah 
was conscious of this rite no matter where she hap¬ 
pened to be. A month had passed without word from 
Flagg. She dreaded any sign from him, yet expected, 
longed for even the most scornful message. She 
waited with a peculiar, tormented shrinking for that 
letter she knew must come. 

One day, as she passed the table, she caught sight 
of her name written in a small, black, unfamiliar hand 
upon a square envelope. 

She opened it before she realized that Flagg had, 
at last, written. Thrusting the letter into her pocket, 
she went outdoors, and, this time, to the beach. No 
matter what he had said, he had written; she could 
bear the brightness of the sea! The beach was packed 
smooth by the receding tide, and ribbons of kelp lay 
at high-water mark like garlands strung from dune 
to dune. There was no wind. A mackerel sky, 
translucent shells of vapor, clouded the sun. It was 
such a vast sky, so tall, so immovable, so luminous! 
Lilah saw herself, very small, walking between sky 


THE TIDE 


195 

and earth, walking in a great crystal globe, with her 
letter. 

She read it at last, expecting a burning accusation. 
But Flagg said simply that he was waiting for word 
from her. He was remarkably better, and her ab¬ 
sence, prolonged unreasonably, was the only thing 
that stood between him and happiness, recovery. 

Lilah turned back to the envelope. The address, 
Peabody’s Point, proved that he knew where she was. 
If she did not write to him, he would come. And 
that, for every one, for herself most of all, would 
mean disaster. 

She went through the deep, dry sand to the dunes 
and lay full length, her arms under her head, staring 
up at the sky. The earth receded, seemed to drop 
away, and she was floating in a void. The sand was 
warm on the surface, cool if you dug your fingers in. 
And the hum of the sea was lazy, detached, like the 
hum in a conch shell. Patches of cloud moved, and 
the sky was gentian blue. ... It hurt, a physical 
hurt, to be alone. . . . 

What could she tell him? The truth? And drive 
him away! Nothing? 

Suddenly, for the first time, she saw herself as a 
failure. She had missed everything. 

The following morning she spoke to Robert about 
the necessary closing of the Thirty-eighth Street 
house. She thought that he ought to attend to it. 
Servants were always careless and she herself did not 
feel equal to details. Robert, in riding breeches and 


i 9 6 THE TIDE 

puttees, was polishing a saddle. He had the rich 
man’s fondness for doing himself what he paid other 
men to do. “Let Grace attend to it,” he said. “She’s 
a crackerjack at that sort of thing.” Lilah said 
tersely that Grace had gone back to nursing; she was 
not in New York. Robert looked up. “Well, I’ll be 
damned! Why didn’t you tell me so?” Lilah an¬ 
swered that she had not supposed he cared one way 
or the other. This Robert took to be a twinge of 
jealousy. His spirits rose and he caught Lilah and 
kissed her. “You care, don’t you? I mean, for me? 
Sometimes, I wonder. You’re a deep one. . . . I’m 
crazy about you, Lilah! I wonder if you know how 
happy I am?” 

“Are you? Then you’ll go to town and close the 
house. There’s a good Bobsie.” 

When he had gone, she felt relief. It was good to 
be alone with Junius. He pottered about at small, 
fussy undertakings which had the dignity of rites re¬ 
ligiously performed. The old relish details which im¬ 
pede the young—the exact measure of a cup of cof¬ 
fee, the arrival of the mail carriage promptly at noon, 
the aroma of a cigar, a meticulous and rigidly adhered 
to change of garments at seven o’clock, the rise and 
fall of the barometer, the flavor of a chop. Life was 
given a false but comforting air of permanence and 
dignity by the importance of little things. There was 
no headlong rush. 

Lilah had allowed herself to be careless; she had 
not, since her arrival, dressed for dinner. Now, with 
Robert gone, that eager, propitiating, sympathetic 


THE TIDE 


197 

presence out of the way, she flattered Junius by ap¬ 
pearing for dinner in negligees with floating sleeves, 
in odd headdresses made of twisted silk, her fingers a 
frosty, excessive sparkle of jewels. A sort of flirta¬ 
tion, rather, an appreciation of one another, candid 
and humorous, could not have gone on in Robert’s 
presence. They could not be themselves where there 
was a likelihood of criticism. Lilah said: “We are 
very alike.” And Junius agreed. Changeable, intol¬ 
erant, vain, impulsive. Delightful! But dangerous 
to other people. Together, they could play—act, shift 
like the winds, speak of beauty, or sit in silence, con¬ 
scious of their pride and their perfection. Robert 
had a way, heavy, uncomprehending, of taking them 
for granted. “She is happier without Robert,” Junius 
thought. “I’ll keep him away a while longer. There 
is work to be done in Georgia—I’m buying cypress. 
I’ll send him there, make it imperative. The color’s 
coming back to her cheeks. Too bad! Too bad! 

. . . But I stuck, where she won’t.” He could pity 
her, for she was so like himself, with all that inde¬ 
finable search for perfection, that restless desire never 
satisfied. He was sorry for such people. Far better 
to be commonplace and to find, in acceptance of dull¬ 
ness, content he and she could never find. There was 
something wrong, unbalanced, in such insatiable na¬ 
tures, and yet their very discontent and arrogance set 
them aside from the common run of people, made 
them, he felt certain, immeasurably superior. He was 
sorry for her. He took to watching her furtively as 
he smoked his single after-dinner cigar. 


i 9 8 THE TIDE 

She had absolutely no interest in small domestic 
matters; however, when she was in the house things 
ran better than they ever did under Aunt Whiteside’s 
fussy management. She would spend a whole eve¬ 
ning staring into the fire, wanting to talk to him about 
the man she loved, but keeping still because she had 
a sense of proportion—after all, he was Robert’s 
grandfather! Junius was curious to know about the 
man who had won her, what sort of fellow he was— 
some one unusual, of course, as different from Robert 
as possible. And Junius had a twinge of remote envy, 
an almost romantic sensation; he knew what rapture 
she was capable of if a man once touched her imagina¬ 
tion. Some one mysterious, a little cruel—otherwise, 
she would have had nothing to do with him. ... As 
for himself, he enjoyed her presence; he would have 
prolonged the moment, stretched it out indefinitely, 
for it contained, in its essence, the illusion of youth. 
He could dream, without being ashamed of dreaming. 
Detached, sympathetic, he watched her. She would 
play for him if he asked it; he liked the modern com¬ 
posers; the more modern the better! Old songs were 
wistful, reminiscent. But these strange, exciting mod¬ 
ernists gave you a sense of to-morrow, innovation, au¬ 
dacity, as if anything were possible, save when, as in 
the Clair de Lune, there was pity and tenderness for 
the despised and forgotten posturings of lovers and 
poets. . . . 

Robert went reluctantly to Georgia, and Lilah was 
left to make her decision. Another letter came from 


THE TIDE 199 

Flagg, impatient, this time, with a touch of anger 
and rebellion. She answered that things were not as 
simple as she had expected; he must wait. A wire 
was brought to her two days later. He was coming! 

Lilah went at once to Junius. She gave him the 
telegram and stood waiting. “You see. I can’t stop 
him. He’ll be here to-morrow.” 

Junius said: “Flagg . . . You didn’t tell me his 
name. . . . Does he know ...” 

“No!” Lilah spoke sharply. “No! I love him. 
I want him. What shall I do?” 

“I’ll send him away. He mustn’t bother you. 
He’s got to be made to understand that you are here, 
with us, temporarily. ... You see, in this I am old- 
fashioned. His following you shocks me. Robert is 
away. And as sorry as I am for you, if he insists, 
I’ll take my cane to him!” 

He stroked her hand. “There. There. These 
things aren’t irrevocable.” 

Lilah said: “I intend to see him.” 

“I intend to prevent you.” 

“You can’t.” 

Their eyes met and Junius rose. “I won’t have 
you cheapen yourself. Sell yourself for a song! I 
love you, too.” 

“You don’t!” she retorted. “You couldn’t, and ex¬ 
pect me to go on living this way. Quivering, inside, 
when Robert comes near me. I deny him everything. 
I torment him. His goodness makes a devil of me. 
I don’t want this child. I’m drugged, now, by this 
place—a sort of lull, when I sleep because it is easier 


200 


THE TIDE 


to sleep. But now that I know Flagg is coming, I 
come alive, body and soul. Perhaps I have ruined 
Robert’s life, but my own will be ruined unless I have 
Flagg.” 

With a feeling of futility, of confusion and fatigue 
Junius said: “If this man’s a gentleman, I won’t need 
to send him off; he’ll go. And stay!” 

With a gesture of contempt, Lilah left him. But 
she was more concerned than she cared to let Junius 
know. 

She went to her room and dressed for riding. The 
windows were open and she could hear the excited 
barking of dogs in the kennel. A gardener was turn¬ 
ing sod on the lawn, spreading manure. Lilacs were 
in bud. Nearly a year had passed since that marriage 
before an altar of syringa bloom. Another year, and 
what would have happened to her? 

She stared at herself in the mirror; then, dissatisfied, 
studied her face in a hand-glass, scrutinizing her skin. 
The struggle to preserve a balance, to keep some sort 
of hold on security, had aged her; her mouth drooped. 
In two years she would be thirty. In ten, forty. And 
she was going to be a withered, embittered little old 
woman; perhaps, after all, beauty was a disadvantage. 
If Flagg lived, she would have to hold him with beauty, 
where another woman might hold him with easy sen¬ 
suality, laughter and indifference to externals—a lazy, 
affectionate, humorous, slovenly woman. . . . 

Lilah put the mirror down. She passed her hands 
over her face, shivered, laughed unsteadily. She was 
slim as a boy in riding clothes. 


201 


THE TIDE 

She went out without speaking again to Junius. 
Their friendship had been shattered in that clash of 
wills; pride, in him, was intensified by senility. He 
was going to be difficult; he might even send for 
Robert because the Peabody integrity was threat¬ 
ened. . . . 

One of the stablemen was rollicking with the spaniel 
in the yard. He touched his cap and when Lilah asked 
him to saddle the roan, he remarked doubtfully: “He’s 
awful fresh, ma’am.” Lilah stooped over the dog and 
said tersely: “Bring him out. I can manage him.” 

In the saddle, she had a moment of panic. The 
big horse wheeled sideways in the gravel, but Lilah 
mounted, with a spring from the stableman’s palm. 
She felt very small and light and free. 

She rode directly to the woods, where, in softer 
ground, the roan was impatient. It was late after¬ 
noon. A sudden darkness, clouds pushing up from 
the western horizon, was followed by a rush of cold 
wind, and a whirl of leaves blew against the horse’s 
legs, startling him. Lilah controlled him with diffi¬ 
culty. Her hand on his neck, she urged him forward. 

The wood was bleak, gray, silent again after that 
brief rush of wind, and Lilah heard a shrill, treble 
pipe of frogs in a pool. But where was Flagg’s dance 
of gnats at sundown? Spring was here and she could 
not watch it with him. She would have to send him 
away. Truth or pretext, she would have to send him 
away. . . . She thought of the child as a tide, rising, 
rising, uncontrollable. This life was within her. She 
contained it and was contained within it. Neither in 


202 


THE TIDE 

body or soul was there escape. She was no longer 
herself; she was implicated, bound up in, adhered 
to, responsible for, another self, a self unrecognized, 
featureless, without volition, yet powerful, terrible. 
She was a body bound by body. Irrevocable. . . . 

The world had changed. The sun was gone, and 
with it the warmth of the earth. The roan was chilly, 
nervous. His ears flicked back, and with a whinny 
he began to run. Lilah thought: a I’ll give him his 
head and let him run it out—he’ll come to himself 
when he’s tired.” Already her hands were numb, her 
arms stiff. 

The bridle path doubled through the woods, crossed 
and recrossed itself, gaining ten miles by this duplic¬ 
ity. The dark, wet earth, broken by pools of melted 
snow, made a tunnel through tangled growth of trees, 
very old and tall. A blurred twilight seemed to bar 
the way. Lilah bent forward. She could no longer 
guide the horse. Sensing her surrender, her fear, he 
lost his head. 

He left the road. The branch of a tree tore Lilah’s 
hat off. She shrieked at him. “Whoa! Whoa! 
Stop! You brute! Stop! For God’s sake, stop!” 

She was struck on the back, between her shoulders. 
A tearing, a blow. She was pulled, thrown, dragged, 
face down, in a thicket. She thought, twisting over 
on her side: “This is death.” 

A dark pain, like blood, flowed over her breast, 
and she fell back again. 


IX 


T HERE was nothing to do but for Lilah to go. 

Robert came into her room again, pale, 
with that new look of a man who has found 
himself in suffering. 

“I’m going, Robert.” 

Robert sat down by the bed. He avoided looking 
at her. It was a pain to look at her; Lilah, with 
that ghost whiteness, the blue veins showing at her 
temples, her hair in two childish braids over her shoul¬ 
ders. She was like a little girl. At the same time, 
there was a mystery about her. She had suffered 
so. She had had to pass, alone, through a dark, ter¬ 
rible suffering where no one could follow or help her. 
Robert felt ashamed, because his own suffering was 
so unimportant in comparison to hers. And yet his 
own cried out for speech. He wanted her to know 
that she had killed something in him; he would never 
tell her. Never. 

“You can go, if you want to,” he said stiffly. 

Lilah turned her head on the pillow. “You don’t 
want me to stay, do you?” 

“Not if you love Flagg.” 

“I do.” 

After a moment, Robert said, “I’ve seen Flagg. 
He’s staying at Biddeford. Did you know?” 

“Yes.” 


203 


204 THE TIDE 

“I suppose my grandfather told you.” 

“Your grandfather is decent enough to pity me.” 

Suddenly Robert went down on his knees and put 
his face on her hand. “God knows I pity you. Stay 
with me, Lilah. Tell me where I’ve failed.” 

“It’s no good,” she said, “to try. To stay. Don’t 
blame me too much. I didn’t know what love was.” 

Her hand stirred beneath his lips, and he got up 
again stiffly. 

“You must stay until you’re well.” 

“They’ll let me walk to-morrow,” she said eagerly. 

“Flagg wants me to divorce you. . . . Well, I 
won’t.” 

“Why?” 

He had not intended to tell her. But the answer 
was torn out of him, a physical wrench, as if he had 
pulled a leech from off his heart. “You’ve hurt me 
enough between you! I’ll be damned if I’ll let you 
humiliate me. A man who divorces his wife is a 
coward. You may do what you like. But I won’t 
divorce you.” 

Lilah turned on her side, away from him. She 
could see the sky, a deep, warm blue, with thin clouds 
passing over. And a quick flight of birds. She had 
intended to tell Robert that she was sorry. Now she 
couldn’t. 

After a moment, he went out. 

She left the Point one morning in June. Her trunks 
and boxes had gone off the night before. Robert’s 
motor, driven by the stable man, Edmonton, was to 


THE TIDE 


205 

take her to the station. Robert had flung away up 
the beach, followed by the spaniel. Junius kissed 
her good-by. He permitted himself only one re¬ 
proach. “I’m not sure that this is going to be any 
better. You won’t like poverty. And happiness at 
the expense of another is likely to go stale.” 

“You had Venice,” she reminded him. 

“But I came back.” 

He took her hand. “Are you sure?” 

“Quite.” 

A wave of faintness, something almost hysterical, 
caused her to lean against him. “We have to be true 
to ourselves. Sacrifice is out of date. ... If Robert 
is wise, he’ll let me go and not care.” 

“Good-by, my dear.” 

She kissed him quickly. 

The motor turned out of the drive, sped smoothly 
through the forest, now richly green, and she saw 
the place where she had been thrown, where Flagg, 
late that night, had found her. It was like him to 
have arrived sooner than he was expected. Like him, 
once there, to have faced his responsibility. Through 
her illness, he had stayed at Biddeford, within call. 
They had not let him see her, but Junius had played 
the part, not unwillingly, of messenger; he enjoyed, 
Lilah knew, the disloyal intrigue. Any man of spirit, 
Junius probably argued—any man of his own day— 
would have driven to Biddeford to thrash Flagg on 
general principles; but Robert had mooned about the 
house, had sat for hours with his head in his hands! 
Junius Peabody’s sympathies were with Lilah. Lilah, 


206 the TIDE 

who lay rigid, her figure outlined beneath the bed 
covers, her face drawn with the peculiar tension of 
her will to conquer. Even death. . . . He had 
brought Flagg’s messages with a grim tenderness and 
had murmured them to her often when she seemed 
unable to hear. Only her lips had quivered, or there 
had been a faint smile. Whenever Junius wavered, 
ashamed of his own part in the affair, he reminded 
himself that in no other way could she be kept 
alive. . . . 

Lilah shuddered. The motor left the woods, turned 
sharply into the paved highroad. . . . What did Ed- 
monton know? 

It occurred to her that Edmonton was no longer 
her servant. In the performance of his duty, he was 
driving her, as he would have driven a guest, to the 
station. 

She straightened herself sharply. Her look became 
at once indifferent and haughty. But something was 
unsteady, out of balance, threatening. Her hold on 
life was precarious; she was drifting away from safety, 
from her established self. The new self she would 
have to create to meet the situation she found herself 
in was still shadowy; she must wear a different face. 

. Love in exile. . . . The future had no signifi¬ 
cance. Nor was there reality in the image of her¬ 
self, reckless, dedicated, indifferent, somehow roman¬ 
tic. . . . 

At the station, Edmonton, swinging her hand-lug- 
gage to the platform, showed an impassive face and 
asked: “New York, madam?” 


THE TIDE 207 

She thought of tipping him and changed her mind. 
After all, she wasn’t a guest. . . . She could not re¬ 
sist saying, as the long train slipped down the track 
toward them: “Don’t let Mr. Robert saddle the roan 
while I’m away, Edmonton.” 

He flushed and touched his cap. He had heard 
something! Servants found out everything. “No, 
ma’am. Indeed, no, ma’am. I won’t. Be sure of that.” 
An astonished, gratified, sly look passed across his 
eyes. He handed Lilah aboard with a return of def¬ 
erence, an unmistakable relish. 

Lilah met Flagg in New York. She went to a hotel, 
and Flagg stayed at the borrowed flat in the ’Fifties. 
She had a few hundred dollars, and she had brought 
every rag and stitch of clothing and all of her jewels. 
It was, she argued, no affair of Flagg’s. Robert had 
given her these things; they belonged to her. She 
owned a distinguished string of small pearls, well- 
matched and unusually brilliant, and, for the more 
formal occasions of the season, Junius had given her 
a small crown of emeralds which had belonged to 
Minnie; this, with an emerald bracelet, too heavy and 
ornate for wear, had about them the innocent elegance 
of the ’Eighties. . . . Lilah discovered her wedding 
ring among the diamonds and square-cut sapphires she 
preferred. She decided to wear it. . . . 

She met Flagg in the lobby of the hotel and they 
talked in the comparative isolation of a taxicab throb¬ 
bing up and down Fifth Avenue in a complicated, 
nervous stream of traffic. 


208 THE TIDE 

Their first excitement gave way to a hurried plan¬ 
ning. They must, Lilah argued, leave New York. 
“I’ve made such a ‘noise’ here,” she said. “I’m more 
of a personage than you realize.” 

Lilah expected to follow Flagg to his middle-west 
university town and to become an anonymous figure 
in the background of his life. But Flagg shook his 
head. “We’d be better off in New York.” 

Lilah suppressed a sharp anxiety. “You won’t lec¬ 
ture, then?” 

He assured her again that he wanted only to lie 
on a green hill with his head in her lap! 

“I can get my hands on three hundred a month. 
Not much; but we needn’t starve! If you say, we’ll 
go abroad. Three hundred a month isn’t to be sneezed 
at in Italy.” 

“But you wanted to go on with your work!” 

His interest in teaching, he explained, had lessened 
as his knowledge increased. He was beginning to be¬ 
lieve that he could do little more than “shove his pupils 
off the high road into the wilderness of personal ex¬ 
perience, speculation”; besides, he was beginning to 
doubt the value of his own contribution. “When I 
found you there, crumpled, covered with blood, ap¬ 
parently dead, I was staggered by my ignorance. 
Death, for myself, has always seemed a sort of trans¬ 
lation. But you—flesh I love— There is no solace 
for what I felt! I want to spend the rest of my days 
with my arms around a concrete loveliness, warmth, 
life. . . . Lilah, I’m afraid to go on alone!” 


THE TIDE 


209 


His desire persisted. They must go abroad, at 
once. Every day spent in the city, crowded, humid, 
was wasted. Lilah had the impression that Flagg was 
hurrying to a happiness which might, with delay, be 
lost. Impatient, often irritable, he was upset by small 
details; he wanted Lilah, enjoyment, fulfillment, im¬ 
mediately. The matter of passports proved to be em¬ 
barrassing. Flagg’s honesty would permit of no com¬ 
promise and Lilah refused to allow their names to 
appear on the same passenger list. They agreed, 
finally, to sail on different ships and to meet in Genoa 
or Naples. 

Flagg left Lilah at her hotel and, alone, went about 
the complicated business of steamer reservations. 

If only there had not been this hiatus; the outlines 
of the adventure were already blurred; in his arms, 
secure, the past definitely discarded, her pleasure in 
her own audacity would return. . . . 

She glanced out over the city. From her bedroom, 
twenty-two stories above the street, she could see the 
rivers, metallic, laced with bridges. She was im¬ 
pressed by her lack of superiority, save only the ele¬ 
vation granted her by this wall of granite and steel. 
. . . Flagg was somewhere down in that swarm of 
people, that tossing and scurrying of humanity. . . . 

Here, society was out of focus. Her rightness or 
wrongness was lost in a conglomerate jumble of right 
and wrong. She could not comprehend adultery—a 
cruel word—betrayal. These things counted only as 
they affected a few individuals. Her right to happi- 


210 


THE TIDE 
ness was paramount. That crowd down there cared 
nothing, knew nothing, of what she did or was, what 
she felt, her success, her failure. . . . She was struck 
by the indifference of the mob, the savage concentra¬ 
tion of the individual. No tragedy, not even national 
disaster, not even war, could touch them all! What, 
then, was she, was any one afraid of? To break a 
commandment, to do good, was like throwing a pebble 
into a pool—a little hoop of ripples. . . . 

Flagg did not come back at once. He telephoned 
that he was standing in line at the Customs House. 
“Have a photograph taken.” “Must I?” It struck 
her that it was not going to be simple, this flight. 
They might have gone to California, to Cuba! But 
we can’t buy lire in California,” Flagg reminded her. 
With a hint of impatience, he rang off. And Lilah, 
alone again, thought: “I’ll go to Thirty-eighth Street. 
There may be an old photograph—” 

She dressed with an odd sense of excitement, of 
daring. She remembered the Waterford glass chan¬ 
deliers; she had never seen them in place. After all, 
the house was her creation; she had evoked it. Flagg 
could have no possible objection to her going there. 
For the rendezvous with that self she was discarding, 
she wore a gown Elmer Shawhan had approved of, 
longer than the fashion of the moment, made of dark 
blue and sulphur yellow; her stockings, sheer; her 
feet, in strapped slippers, might have been bare. A 
small hat and a heavy veil, the perfume she affected, 
gave her an exclusive, an unmistakable elegance. 


211 


THE TIDE 

The caretaker admitted her, after a delay, while the 
taxicab she had hired waited at the curb. “Mrs. Pea¬ 
body!” 

Again that look of surprise! Lilah brushed her 
way in, across the hall, upstairs. The shades were 
not drawn and a flood of sunlight illuminated Elmer 
Shawhan’s riotous panels. Lilah thought: “I told 
Robert to darken this room!” She stood on the 
threshold in a sort of trance of delight. She had for¬ 
gotten how lovely it was; even now, with the furni¬ 
ture covered, the rugs rolled back, it was a room 
worthy of respect. . . . Her dreams of a little renais¬ 
sance had come to nothing; her next step was even 
less promising. Italy, with a man she could not 
marry, an invalid who had abandoned his career for 
her sake. . . . 

She crossed the room and became suddenly con¬ 
scious of voices. Before she could draw back, or 
hide, Robert and Grace Fuller came in from the hall. 
Grace Fuller was in gray, her natural distinction ac¬ 
centuated by a clever hat. Lilah saw Robert’s face, 
flushed and angry. For the first time in her knowl¬ 
edge of him he was beside himself. She said breath¬ 
lessly: “I didn’t know you were in New York! I 
wouldn’t have come here, naturally ...” 

“I intend to sell the house,” he interrupted. “I 
haven’t spent a happy day here. ... If there is any¬ 
thing you want, you are welcome to it.” 

Grace Fuller looked from one to the other. In her 
expression, amusement and pity conquered embarrass¬ 
ment. “Aren’t you two going to be sensible?” 


2I2 THE TIDE 

“No!” Lilah wanted to run, to fly ignominiously 
from this humiliation. She saw how the wind blew; 
what Robert intended to do; where he had turned, 
already, for solace, “understanding.” The whole in¬ 
cident made life and love seem disgusting, trivial. 
Flagg could do nothing to erase the fact of her mar¬ 
riage to Robert. All of their best moments together 
were ugly in the light of their present situation. They 
who had been intimate were bitter strangers, abashed 
by the memory of their intimacy. 

She cried desperately: “Let me go. This is abom¬ 
inable.” . 

Robert said nothing and she ran downstairs, lne 
astonished caretaker opened the door and shut it again, 
with a bang. 

In the taxi, Lilah conquered her panic. “Drive 
around the park slowly.” She needed people, move¬ 
ment, color, to restore her faith in herself. ... 

No matter what the world thought, now, later she 
would be forgiven if she failed magnificently. New 
York was charitable to picturesque sinners. Florence, 
a villa, herself, wistful but triumphant. ... She 
wondered whether she could do without the things she 
had, in a year, come to regard as necessary. On three 
hundred a month she would have to wear made-over 
clothes; she would have to curb her extravagant de¬ 
sire for amusing, expensive accessories. She was one 
of those women who sense every variation in style, 
each new subtle trick of elegance, the sleight-of-hand 
of the mode. To be inconspicuous and astonishing 


THE TIDE 


213 

had become paramount. Until she met Flagg, she 
had thought of little else. Her charm and her pert 
wit had carried her. She had forgotten how to think, 
what to think, since she had long ago discovered that 
a worthless opinion spoken decisively passes for clever¬ 
ness in a hurried world. 

Flagg would not like her friends, vivacious log- 
rollers who had peddled their superficial accomplish¬ 
ments successfully and now called themselves the 
Young Generation of American writers, painters, 
actors, critics and editors. Lilah enjoyed their osten¬ 
tatious sophistry, their good humor and their irrever¬ 
ence. They stimulated her and never bored her; like 
them, she was fundamentally restless, unstable, im¬ 
patient. Perhaps she was incapable of constancy. 
. . . She could never follow Flagg’s thought, pains¬ 
taking, honest, uncompromising. . . . 

The cab turned into the park. On wide, dusty 
greens children in bright dresses romped with colored 
balloons. A procession of motors in a blue reek of 
gasoline clogged the drives. 

To be victorious, she must dominate Flagg. He 
might turn poet or mystic, or he might be content 
with sunlight and fritto mis to. 

She had seen many such couples—lovers who had 
surrendered respectability without a struggle, who 
had relinquished position, who no longer cared what 
was said or thought about their affair and who fought 
like cats and dogs. She must see that this didn’t 
happen. After all, every love, no matter how exalted 
in the beginning, inevitably resolved into a struggle 


214 THE TIDE 

against the loss of illusion. So fragile the threads 
from heart to heart, so impermanent affection. . . . 
Junius had once said to her that the only happy love 
relationships were illicit because marriage harnessed 
the imagination. He believed in the European mar¬ 
riage of convenience, a business arrangement, some¬ 
thing outside the emotions. If this were so, Lilah 
thought, she had a chance of happiness. . . . 

The telephone bell was ringing fretfully when she 
opened the door of her room at the hotel. She ran, 
lifted the receiver with a sudden, passionate reck¬ 
lessness. 

Flagg’s voice, purposefully tranquil, tightened her 
heart. He began to say that there would be diffi¬ 
culty, when she interrupted him: “No! No! I was 
wrong. Forgive me. There’s nothing to be ashamed 
of. The slate’s clean. We’ll go together.” 

Florence was all a golden yellow in August, dusted 
with the pollen of hot sunlight. Flagg and Lilah 
climbed over the hills or drove in a rickety cab, house¬ 
hunting. They chose, finally, a small villa, ironically 
enough named “Villino Sans-Souci,” near the Ponte 
a Mensola. It was dirty, but there was a grape arbor 
at the back, and two very old cypresses, black, tipped 
with gold, traced invisible slow spirals upon a purple 
sky. Vincigliata rose behind them and in the cypress 
groves at sunset there was a constant call of cuckoos. 
“Legendary,” Flagg said. “Mournful, and beautiful. 
We’ll take this. What do you say, Lilah?” 

They could afford it, just. Flagg figured hurriedly 


THE TIDE 


215 

on the back of an envelope. “Rent. Cook. Food 
and light. Fuel. Not much left for cabs, Lilah! 
Or the opera. But we have the view! Turn around, 
my dear, and look—” 

Through the arbor, framed in the dusty arch of 
grape-leaves, they could see the Dome, those delicate 
stone shafts, remote, miraculous, the Tower, the Bar- 
gello, and that great black lily, the Signoria, thrust¬ 
ing through the tumbled roofs of the city. 

“It hasn’t changed,” Lilah said. “What immortal 
loveliness!” She leaned against Flagg and let her¬ 
self sink into her appreciation of him. Robert would 
have been more concerned with the plumbing than 
with the view. Flagg cared for nothing so long as 
he could fill his senses with this old, secretive, sar¬ 
donic city, this city with bold cheek-bones, short shin¬ 
ing hair, the smile of Gioconda and the eyes of a 
hired warrior. Flagg belonged in Florence; there was 
nothing modern about him; he was like Leonardo, 
was perhaps, Leonardo, sent back to question, to ad¬ 
vance a little way, to recede again, like a comet fly¬ 
ing down space. . . . She turned her head and kissed 
his shoulder. 

“Perhaps you won’t miss the other things—” 

“What other things?” 

“Your work. Those guinea pigs and test tubes, 
those farmer boys looking to you for the word.” 

His eyes, for the first time in many weeks, shut her 
out. But he smiled and his arm tightened about her 
waist. “If no one ever comes here—if we’re left alone 
to grow old in our arbor—will you mind, Lilah?” 


2l6 


THE TIDE 


“No!” 

They went into the house, and Lilah, with wide ges¬ 
tures, refurnished it. “We’ll have to get rid of all 
the furniture. All of it! And those fearful pictures. 
Except that one—that’s so bad it’s—positively good! 
This room needs Venetian brocade, claret-against-the- 
light color, with Sixteenth Century chairs—” 

“But we can’t afford such things,” Flagg inter¬ 
rupted. 

“I’d go mad if I had to live in the same house with 
a gilded waste-paper basket,” Lilah answered. 

The agent, sensing criticism, rattled the keys. “The 
villino belongs to a celebrated poet,” he said eagerly. 
He showed his teeth and repeated: “Most celebrated!” 

“It was here,” he assured them with dignity, “he 
wrote ‘Belle ManL’ You know this book?” 

They had come out into the arbor again. And, 
licking herself in a patch of sunlight, a little black 
cat had made herself at home. “Does the cat go 
with the house?” Flagg demanded. 

The agent made a violent gesture. “I have him 
killed! At once! This poet liked the cats— every¬ 
where cats!” He made a terrible face and waved his 
arms. “Shoo! Get out!” 

The cat rose, arched her back, yawned and with 
her tail in the air, slightly crooked at the tip—a sign 
of pleasure—went straight to Flagg. He picked her 
up. “If your poet liked cats, he has my permission 
to use gilded waste-paper baskets.” 

Lilah was seized with a perverse mirth. 

“Spaniels and cats,” she said. But, to Flagg, she 


THE TIDE 


217 

refused to explain. Holding the little black cat in 
the crook of his arm, he was tickling her under the 
chin where a patch of white fur was worn, daintily, 
like a bib. 

In the blazing stillness of an August mid-afternoon, 
their drowsy isolation was broken into by a friend 
of Flagg’s who came out from Florence on a bicycle 
and arrived at the gate of “Sans-Souci,” dusty, jovial 
and eager, with a quizzical look for Lilah and a shout 
for Flagg. 

Lilah had been painting kitchen chairs an artless 
apple green. She looked up, saw a strange man star¬ 
ing at her and stood, the paintbrush at arm’s length. 
This, she saw at once, was to be her first social en¬ 
counter. 

She said quickly: “Mr. Flagg is asleep. I’ll call 
him!” 

“Don’t. Please. ...” 

She hurried indoors, angry, rather stimulated. 
Flagg was lying uncomfortably on the poet’s divan. 
He was not asleep and his eyes looked up at her, mis¬ 
chievous, black, bright, more alive than any eyes she 
had ever seen. 

“Some one—” she began breathlessly. “Tall, dusty 
man on a bicycle—” 

“McNair!” Flagg shouted. 

He ran outside and Lilah heard their noisy greet¬ 
ing. She did not quite dare to follow, but waited 
for Flagg to call her. Presently he did. “Lilah! 
Oh, Lilah!” 


2I g THE TIDE 

She flew to a mirror. . . . How pretty she was get¬ 
ting to be! The color of happiness was over her, 
warm, golden. . . . What a pity that all women 
couldn’t be happy; so many of them were pinched and 
gray, shadowy, unrecognized, unreal. She had never 
existed until Flagg loved her, until, she corrected her¬ 
self, she had loved Flagg. She had had no other 
consciousness, since coming to this place, but this. 
... She went out, smiling. 

“Lilah,” Flagg said, “this is Gil McNair. Can you 
manage tea?” 

Lilah gave her hand, sticky with paint, into a large, 
warm clasp, and it was then she caught that quizzical 
look. It was not a question, it was, rather, a brief 
investigation. With an upward rush of spirits, the 
challenge accepted, Lilah said: “Tea? Of course!” 
But she threw into her glance what she would have 
preferred to say: “Yes! Here we are. Quite irregu¬ 
lar. But quite charming!” 

She made tea on a spirit lamp because she had not 
conquered the mysteries of an Italian stove and, so 
far, she had been unable to lure a cook as far out of 
town as the Ponte a Mensola. It was not the Flor¬ 
ence of before the war; Tuscan maid-servants had be¬ 
come aware of their potentiality in commerce. . . . 
The poet’s cups were eccentric; apparently il the had 
not been popular at the “Villino Sans-Souci.” There 
wasn’t any cut sugar and Lilah had to use cream from 
a can. “Aren’t there any cows in Italy?” she won¬ 
dered. She could hear Flagg laughing in the arbor, 
and she felt a pang of jealousy because he could laugh 


THE TIDE 219 

at something she did not share. To love, she had 
discovered, is to be jealous—jealous of everything, 
each unconsidered, careless gesture not directly to do 
with her; when Flagg slept, she was jealous of his 
dreams. 

She was glad, hearing him laugh, that he had ac¬ 
cepted their situation, not as if he were making the 
best of a bad bargain, but with the positively gorgeous 
indifference of a man superior to his audacities. She 
had not once considered right or wrong—she had 
thrust aside the shadow of presentiment, had drawn 
the warmth of sunlight over the dark depths of pos¬ 
sibility. She had rested for hours with her head 
against Flagg’s breast, listening to the beating, rapid, 
unstable, of his heart, his enemy, her enemy; she had 
lost the reality of death in the living body. . . . 

The arbor was patterned with the cool, blue shadows 
of grape leaves; the sun struck through, white, hot, 
and lay in flakes on the table, on the smoothly brushed 
earth. 

The black cat had wandered in and sat on Flagg’s 
knee in that peculiar, feline trance he liked because, 
he said, it was so “damned superior.” He stroked the 
shining black fur as he talked and Lilah, in spite of 
herself, watched the caressing fingers. 

McNair took the tray from Lilah. His gestures 
were quick, nervous. Lilah discovered that he had 
done something astonishing, if not conspicuous, in the 
war, what, she could not quite make out; it had to 
do with “listening gear.” 

“He can hear celestial ragtime,” Flagg said. “He 


220 


THE TIDE 
‘listens in’ on the Beyond—michrophonic miracle 
man.” 

McNair laughed. He had big, square white teeth, 
like tombstones, and dusty hair worn in a bang. Lilah 
wanted him to notice her. She felt that she must look 
very pretty in her chintz apron, the little turban of 
twisted green silk, her feet in buckled slippers. 

McNair accepted tea and drank it greedily, his 
eyes on Flagg; their talk was experimentary, the talk 
of men widely different yet gifted with an identical 
passion for the world, the adventure offered by life to 
eager men; they liked it well enough to want, hon¬ 
estly, to better it. Words, names she had never heard, 
at first baffled, then bored her. She yawned, but 
Flagg was not stricken, as she had hoped he would 
be, as Robert would have been, with an immediate 
concern. So she moved to the bench beside him, 
slipped her arm through his and let her head fall 
against his shoulder. 

McNair, putting his tea-cup aside with a clatter, 
as if he had only just become aware of her, said: 
“You’re going back in October, Flagg?” 

Flagg answered: “No! I’m through. For a while. 
... I have what every man secretly desires at one 
time or another, leisure for contemplation. I’ve never 
had time to think. Since the war smashed man’s fa¬ 
vorite image of himself, wearing the laurels of prog¬ 
ress, I want to sit alone with the fragments and make 
of them what I can, for my own satisfaction.” 

“For your own satisfaction?” McNair repeated. 
“You used to believe, or claimed you did, that man 


THE TIDE 221 

owes his wisdom to man. You once said that you 
despised ascetics and hermits.” He glanced around. 

Delightful! Your arbor! But you won’t stay 
here!” 

Lilah interrupted: “Why?” 

“Ask Flagg!” 

Flagg said: “I claim the right to the one certain 
beauty life itself! I’ve been through the five cycles 
of psychic hell. I’ve questioned until I’m sick and 
tired of questioning. I’ve come to a sort of accept¬ 
ance that isn’t surrender—it’s seeing! And if I should 
tell you, any one, what I see, know—I’d be damned 
as a dreamer or an idiot. I see that science and reli¬ 
gion, both, have failed. We still suffer plague. We 
still arm ourselves. We still distrust our brother. . . . 
But we go forward. Imperceptibly, forward. . . . 
Here, at peace, I want first to think, later, if possible, 
to write. It depends on whether or not I have any¬ 
thing to say.” 

“You won’t stay,” McNair repeated. His face was 
flushed, and he said good-by abruptly, almost angrily. 

When he had gone, Lilah said: “Did you really 
mean what you said?” 

“Yes.” 

“What did McNair think—about—us?” 

“I don’t know. Nothing, I dare say.” 

Lilah insisted: “But he must have wondered—” 

Flagg lifted her face and said gravely: “For God’s 
sake, let’s be decent sinners! I thought we had de¬ 
cided to pay our debt in the coin of the realm.” 

“I don’t know what you mean.” 


222 


THE TIDE 

“I mean that it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn what 
McNair or any one else thinks of us! The only 
thing that matters is what we think of ourselves. If 
you’re ashamed, you ought not to be here. If you’re 
sorry, you’re only hurting me.” 

She answered: “We’re happy when we’re alone. 
But when people come, we begin to blame each other.” 
She kissed him, quick, light kisses. Then her head 
sank again on his shoulder, and they sat there, clasped 
together, staring through the arch of the arbor at 
Elorence, the towers, the brazen Arno climbing across 
the plain toward Pisa. It was very still. A cart 
went down the road beyond the wall with a tinkle 
of bells. The little black cat sat on the table, lick¬ 
ing, her tail in a plate of cakes. 


X 


T HE lazy enchantment of their exile lasted 
through the summer. In September, Lilah 
complained to Flagg that all of New York 
seemed to have moved to Florence. Whenever she 
went to town she met some one she had known during 
her brief appearance as Mrs. Robert Peabody. She 
encountered curiosity but, from the younger genera¬ 
tion, at least, no hostility; she was not certain whether 
this was an indication of social emancipation or due, 
rather, to her own remoteness from the lives, the ac¬ 
tivities of these people—she was, perhaps, not worth 
snubbing! The older generation was unaware of 
her; their standards resisted, obdurately, the pressure 
of modern opinion. Lilah could dismiss them be¬ 
cause they were “old-fashioned.” But she resented 
the casual indifference of her contemporaries; it was 
selfish, even vulgar; she had, it seemed, nothing ma¬ 
terial to offer them! She was bitterly aware that most 
of them could have been hooked had she baited her 
line with millions. Money, enough of it, meant pleas¬ 
ure, diversion, a sop for the martyrdom of satiety. 
She could have lured the fashionable world to one of 
the veritable ville in the hills near Florence—jazz 
on a Medicean terrace, swimming parties in a marble 
basin by Mino da Fiesole, a liberal supply of sport- 

223 


224 THE TIDE 

ing Italians of the upper class. . . . Her scandal 
would be an asset under such glamorous circum¬ 
stances. The “Villino Sans-Souci” was another story. 

McNair came again, bringing a young Englishman, 
a pianist, a pupil of Busoni, who played on the poet’s 
upright. He soothed Lilah because, without hesita¬ 
tion, he fell in love with her; she called him “silly 
boy,” but he was, if anything, older than Lilah; he 
“adored” women, professed to have been badly treated 
by them, to have thrown himself away, whereas he 
was quite unscrupulous, lazy and irresponsible. He 
played with facility and refused to practice because he 
seemed to have been born with a technique. Tall, 
heavy, he had the typical thespian’s skull, the profile 
of a Shakesperian actor. 

He made love to Lilah whenever Flagg’s back was 
turned. He played “for” her, he said. Lilah began 
to believe that she was responsible for the seductive 
music he somehow got from that long-toothed piano; 
she saw herself in the waltzes of Kreisler, the moon- 
smitten nuances of Ravel, the songs of Rachmaninoff. 
And she was filled with a vague melancholy, almost a 
pity for herself, inexplicable, delicious, like the fore¬ 
bodings of adolescence. She would sit on the terrace 
with Flagg, her hand in his, and seeing the “silly 
boy’s” ardent profile swaying against the glow of the 
piano-lamp, she would think tenderly of Robert, of 
Junius, and of herself. . . . She could only relent, ap¬ 
parently, when she had had her own way. . . . She 
squeezed Flagg’s hand. 


THE TIDE 


225 

Lilah began to know the sort of people she would, 
in New York, have ignored. A thin, hawk-nosed, 
Pittsburgh-born American contessa who lived nearby- 
called repeatedly, bringing with her a shifting retinue 
of cavalry officers; the contessa conducted a sort of 
matrimonial agency; she had, she boasted, introduced 
many “dear, sweet, rich American girls” to young 
Italians of title. Lilah suspected that she lived upon 
the precarious fruits of gratitude. 

Flagg’s reputation attracted scientists from France, 
from Germany, from Rome—he was at the mercy of 
men who coveted his knowledge. He was always gen¬ 
erous, but Lilah saw him in moods of savage contempt 
and rebellion. “You waste yourself on these people,” 
she said. 

“I know! I wish they’d leave me alone!” But 
he never seemed to be able to resist them; she 
would rescue him from arguments carried on in half 
a dozen languages, lead him indoors and make him 
lie down. He would look up at her, his face pinched, 
his lips pale, and with a gesture of hopelessness, say: 
“I’ll have to go back, some day, and work! I don’t 
know a damn thing!” And once he added, with a 
querulous bitterness: “There’s so little time.” 

“But you’re going to get well.” 

“Yes,” he said. “Perhaps. It’s a new idea. . . . 
If I do, it will be because of you.” He smiled. “I’m 
not used to you, Lilah! I find myself looking at you, 
wondering who you are and how you came to be here. 
. . . You’re not sorry, are you?” 


226 


THE TIDE 

“Not if you aren’t.” 

So they reassured each other. 

Flagg was not a man who enjoyed idleness. Mc¬ 
Nair left for Edinburgh. Save only Don Orlando, a 
priest who came down from Siena occasionally to spend 
an hour in the arbor, and an eccentric Florentine, a 
sort of inventor-alchemist, there was no one he en¬ 
joyed. He took to wandering away into the country, 
on foot. Lilah was left to her own devices. She tried 
to convince herself that she was happy. This was 
what she had made for herself; she could not question 
his love; her own was deeper than she had thought 
possible—her feeling consumed her. But her char¬ 
acter was unchanged. She resisted, despised disci¬ 
pline; denial made her intractable. She wanted pleas¬ 
ure, excitement, admiration. There was danger in 
the heartless and unstable passion of such men as the 
English pianist. She hated herself because this was 
so. But she told herself that had Flagg been differ¬ 
ent, she would have been contented to sit in the arbor 
at the Ponte a Mensola, secure in the possession of 
love. 

Something instinctive in Flagg, out of reach, re¬ 
sisted accepted social standards. He stood aloof from 
close personal bonds, even, fundamentally, from Lilah. 
He was solitary, but not morose. She never really 
knew his failings or his ambitions; his confidences 
were always touched with self-scorn, yet he refused 
sympathy—it was as if he preferred to find his own 
way. His feeling for her was identical; he realized, 


THE TIDE 


227 

perhaps, that sex would entangle him, hold him back 
from that mysterious pursuit of his. He was not 
easily stirred by her mere physical presence; she 
never felt that he had gone into the adventure through 
a desire for gratification. And she was flattered by 
his most casual caress because she realized that he 
was not demonstrative; his emotions were deep, strong 
and, when aroused, ruthless. 

But there were moments when Lilah was baffled by 
his reserve; she felt inadequate. Her own human, 
reprehensible sufferings, longings and jealousies fell 
back before his impartiality. He had believed in their 
right to live together. The fact that she did not love 
her husband, Flagg insisted, absolved her. But he 
had not stopped to consider what the affair might mean 
to Lilah; it was demoralizing, she decided, to ignore 
the world’s opinion. If Flagg should die, she would 
have no resistance. 

Thoughts like these threaded her consciousness; for 
the most part, she was lulled by the fact of his pres¬ 
ence. Whenever he touched her, she sensed the im¬ 
mortality of happiness. 

Coming out of Doney’s confectionery shop one aft¬ 
ernoon, with a box of French pastry, she met Mrs. 
Sinclair, a willowy figure in gray crepe, with envelop¬ 
ing veils, descending from an open touring-car painted 
royal blue. 

“My precious darling.” 

She enfolded Lilah briefly. 

“I heard that you’d run off with Putnam Flagg. 


228 


THE TIDE 


The Wagners crossed with you. That witty Wagner 
girl was too absurd—she said you’d been flagged. 
Was that vulgar? How are you?” 

“Awfully well,” Lilah answered. She was sorry 
that she had worn her most unbecoming hat and a 
dress that was much too short for the mode. 

“Of course you came to Florence. Extraordinary, 
how they all do—people who break away—irrespon¬ 
sible, brave people! Sinclair and I are so desperately 
conventional. We’ve been married fifteen years and 
neither of us has ever cast the eye—well, not seri¬ 
ously! Sinclair’s in the car. Don’t speak to him, 
Lilah darling—he’d be shocked. Flagg hasn’t a cent, 
has he? I don’t see, frankly, why you did it, or what 
you gained. You had everything on earth you could 
ask for, and New York at your feet. Sympathy is 
with Robert, of course. He’s enormously popular, 
and any number of women are applying. ... You 
aren’t divorced?” 

“No.” 

Mrs. Sinclair turned with a swirl, positively orien¬ 
tal, of draperies. 

“Are the chocolates good here? We’re on our way 
to Bologna—then on up, to Paris. They say Doucet’s 
clothes are inimitable, and I’m in rags.” 

She went into the shop and Lilah, lifting her head, 
crossed the sidewalk to the royal blue car. Behind a 
pair of smoked goggles she found Sinclair’s eyes star¬ 
ing at her with a sort of panic. “How do you do?” 
He gasped, leaned forward, offered a limp hand. 


THE TIDE 229 

“How do you do? Beastly weather, isn't it? Where 
are you stopping?" 

“At the Ponte a Mensola," Lilah said sweetly. 

“Well, I must say, you’re looking fit." 

“I am." 

“What’s May doing? Tell her to hurry!" 

Lilah turned away. The encounter had left her 
trembling. She crossed the Tornabuoni, signaled a 
cab and drove all the way back to the Ponte a Men- 
sola. Somehow this extravagance comforted her. 

The ride was long and dusty. A stream of cars 
and trucks, carts and trolleys, blocked the narrow road 
between endless villa walls. The cabman, a disrepu¬ 
table Tuscan in a frock coat and a patent-leather hat, 
gurgled and hiccoughed at the horse. She could 
imagine the progress of the Sinclair’s motor, climbing 
the tortuous streets of sun-smitten hilltowns, rushing 
across the Lombardian plain, climbing Alpine passes, 
on again through France to Paris—in its wake a 
servile host with well-silvered palms bent in an atti¬ 
tude of obeisance to American millions. Lilah knew 
how Mrs. Sinclair would spend her time in Paris—a 
round of the couturi&res, perhaps in the company of 
a Frenchman, a rarefied sycophant, dancer, flatterer 
and debased wit who would criticize mannequins and 
gowns, choose May Sinclair’s wardrobe and profit by 
her vanity to the extent of a cruise in the Sinclair 
yacht or a trip to the South of France in the Sinclair’s 
private car. 

Lilah’s imagination, like a shutter, opened and 
closed upon visions of fashionable America, the people 


23 o THE TIDE 

she had known and might eventually have dominated, 
moving from Paris to London, from Biarritz to San 
Moritz, from New York to Palm Beach. Their 
houses, jewels, clothes, pleasures, were rare and ex¬ 
clusive enough to permit them any latitude of be¬ 
havior; now that she was not a part of their life, 
Lilah could be contemptuous. Except for chance, 
she would in all probability have been in Paris, buy¬ 
ing the best of Doucet’s collection ... or ... no; 
at the Point, waiting for her child to be born. . . . 

She put her hands up to her face. 

Women like May Sinclair had escaped. Lilah suf¬ 
fered because she had not been content to use the ma¬ 
terial at hand—the fabric for the fashioning of her 
dreams had always been just beyond reach. 

She decided to say nothing to Flagg of her encoun¬ 
ter. She went up the steep path from the gate to the 
house. Flagg was leaning on the terrace wall. The 
late sun gilded him, so that he was like a figure in 
bronze. Lilah called: “You old pagan! I want ten 
lire. I’ve been extravagant.” 

“Ten lire?” 

“To pay the cabman.” 

“Lilah,” Flagg said seriously, “you haven’t changed.” 

“But I have!” 

She paid the cabman and ran back to Flagg. “But 
I have changed! I needed gloves and bought pastry 
instead for your tea—black, sticky cakes with cher¬ 
ries on top. Look!” 

Flagg looked. “Lilah, do you know, I think that 
cat’s going to have kittens!” 


THE TIDE 231 

They went to the arbor. Lilah admitted that 
Flagg’s suspicions were justified; the little black cat 
was going to have kittens. And Flagg said: “Damn! 
I hate having dumb things suffer. We’ll have to make 
a bed for her.” 

He went into the house and came back with a 
clothesbasket and a blanket. “But she’s not going 
to have them to-day!” Lilah cried. Flagg answered 
seriously that it was just as well to be prepared. 
These things upset him; birth was terrifying. “I 
hope you’ll never have a child. I’d probably die. Go 
mad. Knock my brains out.” 

Lilah stroked the cat. Her heart tightened. After 
a moment she said: “I won’t have a child.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“That time when I was thrown—” 

Their eyes met. Something flashed across Flagg’s 
eyes, a fugitive anger. “Oh. That was it. Why 
didn’t you tell me?” 

“I couldn’t.” 

“You can tell me anything.” 

After a pause, he added: “You weren’t quite honest, 
Lilah. I wouldn’t have gone to Maine if I had known 
what you’ve just told me. Your husband has every 
reason to believe that I’m a cad.” 

“Must we talk about these things? Can’t we for¬ 
get them?” 

He stooped again over the basket. His expression 
was not guarded and Lilah cried: “If you think I 
wanted to be hurt—if you think I tried deliberately—” 


232 THE TIDE 

Flagg turned away. “We can’t forget these things. 
But you’re right; we needn’t talk about them.” 

When he had gone, Lilah wept a little. The warm, 
sinewy body of the stray cat comforted her; she held 
it close, as she would never have held one of Robert s 
spaniels, letting her tears fall on the glossy fur like 
drops of quicksilver. If she sat there long enough, 
she knew, Flagg would come back, repentant. And 
presently he came, drawn by her silence. “I’m sorry, 
Lilah.” 

She burst out: “You’re thinking of yourself when 
you ask me not to divorce Robert! I could, easily, 
in Paris.” The accusation was turned adroitly against 
Flagg. “Am I selfish? Isn’t it, rather, a question 
of honesty? Must we go over that again?” Lilah 
turned her head away. “I’m unhappy.” Flagg gazed 
at her with a curious detachment, as if he were seeing 
her for the first time. Presently he said deliberately: 
“If divorce will make you happy, by all means go to 
Paris. I don’t know what the process is, how long 
you’d have to live there or whether, in the end, we 
could afford the necessary expense. But you must, 
at all costs, be happy.” 

Later in the day, still smarting under the memory 
of Sinclair’s dismissal, she wrote to Junius: “I am 
going to divorce Robert. Will you find out from him, 
for my sake, whether he would be willing to come to 
Paris and make the necessary arrangements?” She 
added, with a flourish of defiance: “I am gloriously 
happy.” 


THE TIDE 


233 


With the letter safely in the post, Lilah felt a re¬ 
turn of security. It was only a matter of time before 
she could demand recognition. She dreamed of sub¬ 
jugating Florence; there was opportunity for a clever, 
pretty and accomplished woman to have a distin¬ 
guished “drawing-room.” She hadn’t money, but she 
had everything else. 

With this possibility in mind she looked with new 
eyes at the “Villino Sans-Souci.” The poet had fur¬ 
nished it with lavish bad taste. He had had a mor¬ 
bid turn of mind, and perhaps to stimulate his imag¬ 
ination or in the interests of publicity had slept in a 
bed built like a gondola, black, funereal, uncomfort¬ 
able, and had placed a wooden statue of Aphrodite 
in a niche, a sort of shrine before which he had burned 
tapers “to love and sorrow.” His drawing-room was 
a museum of amorous mementoes, signed photo¬ 
graphs of pretty actresses —A mon cher ! Tua , Maria. 
Sempre , Nina —abominable porcelains, first editions, 
cushions and ecclesiastical velvets. His desk, where 
he had probably written “Belle Mani” was the largest 
piece of furniture Lilah had ever seen, an affair of 
ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, “a battleground for 
literature,” Flagg said. “The whole place is like an 
embalmed scandal.” 

The house itself was old; it had been a podesta’s 
and bore the patina of several centuries. “I believe 
we could buy it for a song,” Lilah said. She kissed 
the tips of her fingers. “And I could make it into 
one of the loveliest houses in Florence.” 


234 the tide 

Her desire for beauty had never got her anywhere. 
Now she was restless and dissatisfied because there 
were too many footstools and majolica vases in the 
“Villino Sans-Souci.” A few thousand dollars—only 
a f ew —would transform this wilderness into a setting 
worthy of her ambition. She began to haunt the shops 
along the Borgognissanti, where, for ridiculous prices, 
she was offered the treasures of palaces; Sixteenth 
Century tables, dim Venetian mirrors, flamboyant 
chairs, chests, silver, brocades stiff with tarnished gold 
threads, faded, “like sunlight through claret.” Her 
desire for possession—she was a victim of her love 
of these things—was a sort of drunkenness; she made 
promises, broke them, had furniture sent to the “Vil- 
lino Sans-Souci” on approval and sent back again; 
she was at once the despair and the victim of the 
antiquaries. 

Flagg had no idea that she had in her possession 
the pearls Robert had given her. They were hidden 
away in a hat-box together with the emerald crown 
and bracelet. 

One day she took them to a dealer whose shop was 
on the Ponte Vecchio, an unpretentious, shadowy room 
ten feet square. Across a modern counter upholstered 
in black velvet, Lilah faced a man who was positively 
medieval, lean, dark and clever; he had the delicate 
hands of an expert, flexible wrists and pointed, sensi¬ 
tive, critical fingers. The pearls, a long string, lay 
coiled on a small cushion, an opalescent serpent. 
Lilah had no idea how much they were worth. “I 
want to sell them,” she explained. The dealer con- 


THE TIDE 


235 

sidered, his hands clasped under his chin. His offer, 
in lire, astonished her, but she covered her surprise 
with an emphatic shake of her head. 

“Too little?” The dealer’s face became enigmatic. 
“I recognize these pearls, Madame. They belong to 
the Peabody collection. I sold them—this clasp—to 
Mr. Junius Peabody, thirty years ago. I never for¬ 
get a really important purchase; sooner or later, the 
most valuable pearls in the world pass through my 
hands. I have, besides, a record.” 

Suppressing a feeling of guilt, Lilah said: “The 
pearls are mine. I am Mrs. Robert Peabody.” 

“I see. Exactly. ... I can sell the string, imme¬ 
diately, to an American lady who is now in Rome. My 
offer stands.” 

Realizing that this man was superior to the sort of 
bargaining usual on the Rialto, Lilah accepted the offer. 
The pearls were whisked away by a clerk. The dealer 
remarked upon the weather. And the clerk, returning, 
paid into Lilah’s hands the sum of seventy-five thou¬ 
sand lire. She signed her name—once, twice—the 
dealer bowed without a trace of animation, and she 
went out again into the street, a street, a world trans¬ 
formed, no longer inimical, but hers. A duck of a 
world! 

A duck of a world! 

With seventy-five thousand lire hidden away beneath 
the tissue paper in an “Annette” hat-box, happiness 
flowed back over Lilah’s spirit. Her worldly surface, 
that inimitable appearance of security, reappeared. 


2 3 6 THE TIDE 

Her manner became decisive, her bearing assured. She 
found it possible to smoke a cigarette with her old 
manner of casual indifference. She could be Russian 
without an inward shiver of self-ridicule and distrust. 

She postponed buying what she coveted because, in 
possession of seventy-five thousand lire, she could af¬ 
ford to be particular. The “Villino Sans-Souci” was 
inadequate. She must have one of the smaller Medicean 
houses—she could imagine Mrs. Sinclair saying: “Lilah, 
darling! What a delicious garden!” 

With the contessa, in a hired carriage driven by a 
respectable coachman in livery, Lilah inspected the 
available houses. Flagg knew nothing of these ex¬ 
cursions. The gates of imposing, crumbling ville were 
thrown open and Lilah glimpsed some of the most 
coveted interiors in Italy. The demoralizing sim¬ 
plicity and perfection of these rooms—spacious, ex¬ 
quisite in proportion, frescoed—went to her head. She 
found herself living in imagination in a setting con¬ 
trived by the most cunning artists of Lorenzo’s day for 
a corrupt and fastidious court. Terraces of stone worn 
smooth, grass-grown, crumbling; basins reflecting the 
complicated foliage of live oaks; cypress alleys and 
balustrades, the warm, ochre walls of Tuscan palaces, 
unbroken, without ornamentation, sharp against the 
dazzling purple of the sky. . . . 

The contessa was garrulous; her enthusiasm, her 
bad and fluent Italian embarrassed Lilah. She was 
greedy, over-inquisitive. And with a sort of officious 
generosity she wanted to establish Lilah at once in a 
villa at Montughi. “But, car a mia, it’s perfect! I 


THE TIDE 


237 

don’t see what you expect. You’d better snap it up 
at once or some American vulgarian will lease it.” 

It was easy to imagine herself established, with 
Flagg, in that ingenuous, expensive little palace. The 
seventy-five thousand lire , her treasure horde, were an 
open sesame to the most extravagant dreams. 

But she did not dare to confide in Flagg; something 
warned her that he would not approve, understand, 
forgive. 

The December rains drenched Florence. Valam- 
brosa was powdered with snow. The Arno, amber, 
swollen, poured through the city, covered the mud 
flats, became all at once a veritable river. 

Flagg was driven indoors. He began, tentatively, 
to write. The effort exhausted him. He would wres¬ 
tle with his enemy, breathless, contemptuous, until he 
collapsed. 

And suddenly, for no reason, out of her security, the 
idea came and persisted that her happiness was threat¬ 
ened. 

Flagg was ill again. 

Lilah never knew the precise moment when she was 
first aware that he might not be going to live. His 
eyes were frightened most of the time, although he 
kept on smiling at her. Noises irritated him. He 
wanted silence. He would sit at his desk, writing, into 
the night, obstinate. And when she spoke to him, he 
would shake his head and ask her to go away. There 
was something he wanted to do, to finish, before he 
called quits. It was absurd to say that he couldn’t 
work. He could. 


238 THE TIDE 

On fine days he sat in the arbor, holding the cat 
and smiling a queer, fixed smile that terrified Lilah. 
When it rained, he moved indoors and sat, bent, in an 
attitude which was belligerent and pathetic, at his 
desk—that “battle-ground of literature” inlaid with 
mother-of-pearl. 

At night he would come into her room and lie with 
his face pressed against her shoulder, like a child that 
is afraid of what he might see in the dark. 

When she questioned him, he was perfectly still. 

And now, she knew, she loved him more than any¬ 
thing in the world. 

Love, complete love, came because she knew she 
could not have it. Flagg was going to die. She 
had let herself off from feeling, because there was 
always time to give way to an emotion that would be 
so great that something of herself would have to perish. 
Now, because there was so little time, she surrendered 
to it. She could not dodge facts any more; she must 
face them and make of her life what she could with 
what she had. Her nature was terrible to her because 
she was in the grip of a genuine passion; she wanted 
to make herself over in time to conquer Flagg’s reti¬ 
cence, to have him for herself. She had been selfish. 
She had taken whatever she wanted, without caring. 
But she had cared. ... It hadn’t been easy to give up 
everything and come to Flagg. She wasn’t superior, 
as Flagg was superior, to humiliation. 

But now she saw what she had come for. 

She saw herself, little, defeated, having to start all 


THE TIDE 


239 

over again. She was humble, frightened. She saw 
that she could have nothing without earning it. And 
this revelation was like an unendurable light beating 
against her consciousness. There was no escape. Be¬ 
cause the future held no happiness, the present was 
terrible, since it contained the essence of the thing she 
would go on wanting all the rest of her life. It was so 
precious, so elusive, so beautiful, and so inevitable. 

She could not bear to watch Flagg’s suffering. She 
sent for a physician who came out from Florence and 
was alone with Flagg for two hours. Lilah waited, 
her heart fluttering as if she, not Flagg, were going to 
die. 

When the two men finally opened the door and 
came out, Flagg was still smiling, but it was not that 
fixed, self-conscious smile Lilah had come to fear. 
He seemed relieved. The physician nodded casually 
to Lilah and drove away again, in a rickety cab, toward 
the city. Lilah thought: “He can’t be a great specialist 
and come in a carozza. I won’t believe anything. . . 

Flagg said: “It’s all right, Lilah. I’m sorry you 
worried. I’ve got a chance. Only I’ll have to stop 
writing.” 

Lilah thought: “He’s not telling me the truth. He’s 
going to die and he’s glad of it.” 

After that she felt that everything was against her, 
even Flagg’s will to die. If he had really loved her, 
he would have wanted to live. 

She heard from Junius Peabody toward the end of 
December. The familiar, heavily embossed stationery 
post-marked Peabody’s Point bore her name and the 


240 THE TIDE 

frivolous address: “Villino Sans-Souci” in Junius’ 
spidery hand. Lilah tore the envelope open with a 
feeling of impending crisis. 

She read: 

“Dear Lilah: 

“Your letter, the first from you in over six months, con¬ 
tained no news of yourself. I wanted to know whether or 
not you had made a success of your experiment. Society 
has never been charitable to women who take happiness 
they are not entitled to. A few celebrated women of 
genius have escaped criticism because their contribution 
was superior to their ‘transgression.’ I am not preaching 
to you. In this day and generation there are no fixed 
standards of behavior. I am only complaining because 
there is something shoddy, to me, offensive, in a woman 
of your quality ‘taking’ life in a rented villa—one of that 
pathetic band of outlaws who play at respectability in the 
smaller cities of Europe. I admit my part in the affair. 
But I somehow had faith that you would send that fellow 
packing when you were well enough to recognize his peculiar 
selfishness. I cannot resist begging you to consider seri¬ 
ously returning with Robert. He will, as you request, 
meet you in Paris on the first day of January. I am en¬ 
closing the name and address of his lawyer there. I will 
see that your position, in America, is secured.” 

He signed himself, characteristically: “Junius.” 

Lilah thought angrily: “Hypocrite! He wants me 
there, because I amuse him.” 

His own indiscretions had been made palatable, 
sugar-coated with secrecy. She was happier than he 
had ever been in his selfish enjoyment of women who 
had had to leave him because he was respectable. He 


THE TIDE 241 

had spared Minnie’s Victorian sensibilities by carry¬ 
ing on an elaborate, an “artistic” deception. . . . 

“I despise men,” Lilah said aloud. 

Flagg glanced up. “Why?” 

“Read this!” 

She tossed Junius’ letter across the breakfast table. 

Flagg’s expression was both contemptuous and em¬ 
barrassed. When he spoke, his voice was unsteady. 
“It seems that your husband is, after all, going to let 
himself be divorced.” 

The question of money came up immediately. Lilah 
couldn’t go to Paris because there wasn’t enough 
money. They had spent their month’s allowance al¬ 
ready and the January draft, which wouldn’t come 
until the tenth of the month, would have to be used 
to settle the December bills. “I could wire for a 
few hundred. I’ve never told you. This money is 
mine during my life-time. It comes from an estate 
held in trust for my younger brother who’s out in 
India. When I die, it goes to him. I could borrow 
on the future, but I don’t want to. I never have.” 

“But I’ve got to go. Think, darling, what it means! 
Surely, you aren’t jealous of Robert—now.” 

“No.” 

“I’ll have to see him. But it will be formal, em¬ 
barrassing. The lawyer will explain things. And be¬ 
fore you know it, I’ll be free.” 

Flagg turned to Junius’ letter. “I’m not sure. I 
hardly think it will be as simple as that. They’ll urge 
you to go back. They’ll put up all sorts of argu¬ 
ments. They’ll make it hard for you. I’d prefer that 


242 THE TIDE 

you didn’t go. . . . Later, will be time enough.” 

He got up and came around the table, touching her 
hair, a caress that always stirred her to the heart, it 
was so unconsidered and gentle, the caress of a friend; 
it made her precious to herself. But now, in her 
eagerness, she drew away. 

“I must go! I want to marry you! Then, you can 
return to America, to the work you like. Or we can 
live here—properly. Be the sort of people you de¬ 
spise, upright, tipping-over-backward people! But 
we can always laugh at ourselves. We needn’t lose our 
sense of humor simply because we happen to be re¬ 
spectable. . . .” 

She paused, scared by his look, aware of her failure, 
but sustained by a conviction that she was misunder¬ 
stood. 

Flagg reminded her again that there was no money. 
“Only a few lire, unless I cable for more.” 

Lilah cried: “But I have some money! Lots of it. 
I meant to tell you. I sold my pearls.” She laughed: 
“Like the lady in the melodrama. . . .” 

“I didn’t know you had any pearls.” 

“They weren’t becoming,” she said carelessly. “I 
prefer jade, or ivory—” 

“Were they valuable?” 

“I got seventy-five thousand lire.” 

“Good God.” 

Flagg turned abruptly and went to the window. 
He stood there looking out into a downpour of rain, 
at Florence, sodden and drenched. 

“The pearls were mine,” Lilah remarked. She felt 


THE TIDE 243 

herself growing angry. She felt that she would lose 
her temper if he pressed her; say things she would 
regret. The old self wasn’t conquered. She despised 
criticism. She wanted to be thought right. 

Flagg turned. His face was dark again, but his 
feeling had driven the look of fear out of his eyes. 
He had forgotten himself. “You left the Peabody’s 
under circumstances that required the most absolute 
honesty. You should have come to me with the clothes 
you stood in. I forgave you the eight trunks full of 
finery—after all, your husband had no use for it, and 
you, apparently, did. It doesn’t matter, to you, who 
pays for the things you want, or whether you are 
giving value received. To me, it does matter. . . . 
What we did might have been splendid. It isn’t! I’m 
as ashamed as you are. Because of these damned, 
petty things—this letter, for instance! And what 
you’ve just told me. The stinking ugliness of desire 
and compromise. . . .” 

He got control of himself with a wrenching effort. 
“You’d better go to Paris. I’d rather compromise 
than be ashamed.” 

Flagg went out and did not come back. She 
watched him hurry down the path to the gate, bend¬ 
ing his head against a downpour of rain. She said 
bitterly: “You shouldn’t have spoken to me like that.” 
But he couldn’t hear, of course—the window was 
closed, and the rain beat against the ground with a 
harsh, rhythmic clatter, the noisy rain of southern 
countries. 


244 THE TIDE 

Flagg disappeared up the road to Vincigliata, into 
the forest of young cypress trees. 

Lilah thought: “I ought to feel more than I do.” 

What had happened was too important for concrete, 
recognizable feelings. She couldn’t grasp it all at 
once. She was numb with misery. She went about 
the house doing unimportant things with great serious¬ 
ness, an exaggerated attention. She put a book-shelf 
in order and cleaned Flagg’s study. The dust flew 
out of the window as she would have liked to shake 
out her thoughts, scatter them, get rid of them. 

At ten o’clock the casual servant who came in from 
a near-by farm appeared under a cont&dino s green 
umbrella, like a big, wet lettuce-leaf on legs. . . . 
Lilah was explicit, much more so than usual. She set 
the table herself, humming, “as if nothing had hap¬ 
pened,” she reminded herself. She had the feeling 
that if she ignored what had happened it couldn’t be 
serious. But everything she touched seemed to be 
impermanent; knives and forks and plates had a sort 
of unreality. 

She went upstairs, frightened by the dread that 
clutched at her throat. But she must put off remem¬ 
bering. She would count the money—try to under¬ 
stand what Flagg had meant about her selling the 
pearls. 

She counted the bills, laid them in little piles, was 
relieved by their ordinary appearance. Surely Flagg 
hadn’t stopped loving her because of these little green 
notes. . . . She put them away, confident that she 
could make him understand as soon as he came in. 


THE TIDE 245 

... It was absurd for a man and woman in love 
with each other to quarrel over something petty. . . . 

But she mustn’t think of that. 

Flagg did not come in for lunch. The sky was 
leaden, yellow, and the rain came down in solid sheets. 
She couldn’t bear to be alone in the house. That wet 
lettuce leaf stumbled down the hill. There was no 
one but Aphrodite in her niche, a painted goddess with 
gilded ringlets and heavy lids, the smile of a courtesan, 
the little hands of a child. ... No wonder the poet 
had turned to warfare for sensation. Things. Things. 
Things. And nothing got you anywhere. First, you 
thought it was this and then that. And nothing satis¬ 
fied the you that was personal and aching. Not even 
love. For then things like this happened. . . . 

She thought: “I’ll go out. I’ll feel better if I go 
out.” 

She splashed down the road and stood, holding her 
umbrella against the rain, waiting for a tram. 

Twenty-five centesimi. Cheaper than a cab. . . . 
She sat with the dripping umbrella pressed against her 
knees and stared at the people. An old man. His 
trousers were baggy at the knee and the skin of his 
hands was like brown corduroy. A young girl with 
bold, unwavering eyes stared back at Lilah; there was 
an imitation diamond ring on the first finger of one 
plump, red hand. 

The city closed around the street; great, drenched 
walls thrust up, cornices leaned over; people surged 
along the narrow sidewalks under a tossing and writh¬ 
ing of umbrellas; priests, fascisti with curled forelocks 


246 THE TIDE 

like young game-cocks, like frizzed savages . . . 

girls ... 

Here and there a shop-window was lighted. 

Lilah walked through the square and across to the 
Tornabuoni. 

She went into a hairdresser’s establishment. A 
warm, sickish odor, perfumed, assailed her. She ex¬ 
plained to a pale woman in pearl earrings and clinging 
black satin that she wanted a “wave.” Madame could 
be accommodated because, on a rainy day, there were 
many cancelations. Right here. ... In this booth. 

Subito! ' 

A small, blackish man removed Lilah’s hat. Her 
hair fell down on her shoulders and she thought with a 
stab of pain, acute, physical, of Flagg’s fingers, ca¬ 
ressing, caressing. . . . 

The marcel irons twirled. Did Madame want 
pompadour or straight back? It was becoming fash¬ 
ionable to clip the hair at the nape of the neck, close, 
like a boy’s. ... It would be very becoming to 
Madame. 

Did this man love? Every one did, sooner or later. 
Why was it that the world wasn’t smitten with mad¬ 
ness; would she ever be sane again. . . . She fingered 
the bottles on the dressing-table. Brilliantine. Rouge. 
Skin tonic. Pomade. Mettre cette poudre avec la 
houppe, s’essuyer avec un linge. . . . 

Sooner or later, she would have to question not only 
her reflection, that face, unchanged by dread and be¬ 
wilderment, but Lilah, the woman. It wasn’t possible 
longer to avoid that encounter. She, herself, had 
failed. . . . Not yet! 


THE TIDE 247 

“Madame has pretty hair. In French, we say 
cendre —the colour of ashes.” 

She found the English pianist in the drawing-room 
when she got back to the “Villino Sans-Souci.” 

“Hallo! I thought you’d give me tea. Beastly day. 
Where’s Flagg?” 

“He’s not here,” she said coldly. Suddenly she 
wanted to hurt Flagg. “I don’t know where he is.” 

The Englishman’s eyes grew round. He made a 
sound like a whistle. “I see! You’ve quarreled.” 

“Yes.” 

Let him know it. It didn’t matter. Flagg was try¬ 
ing to frighten her. . . . She took off her hat and sank 
down on the divan. “I don’t want to talk. I want 
you to play for me. Something strange, ugly. I see 
now why modern art is out of balance and discordant 
and crooked—the world is sick at its soul. When 
you’re sick at your soul you don’t want beauty. You 
want something clever and horrible, like the evil in 
yourself.” 

The Englishman’s eyes, always flickering, as if there 
were little flames in them, blazed up. His lips parted. 
He was like a smooth, too fat faun smoking a ciga¬ 
rette. His eyes appraised her. And, for a terrible 
reason, Lilah was glad that she was beautiful. She 
tipped her head back so that he could see her throat. 

This man understood women; he pitied them and 
desired them; but they never loved him unless they 
had lost love; he had never known, never would know, 
the best of love, because he expected the worst of it. 


2 4 8 THE TIDE 

Suddenly he jumped up and went to the piano. 111 
play you the Saint-Sebastien; I know your real mood 
is religious, not evil at all! A woman of your experi¬ 
ence buries each amour with a Te Deuni . 

Lilah wanted to tell him that she had had no ex¬ 
perience, but she knew that he wouldn’t believe her.. 
Her life with Robert, with Flagg, had never really 
changed her; she hadn’t loved Robert, and Flagg 
hadn’t loved her; when people spoke of experience 
she supposed they meant that dedication of self which 
is spontaneous, mutual, irrevocable. . . . 

“Stop! I can’t bear that sort of music.” 

He spun around, seized another cigarette. “Then 
we’ll talk. I’ll cheer you up. Poor, lonely, adorable 
Lilah.” He sat, too close, on the divan. “What on 
earth possessed you to fall in love with a man whose 
mind is fixed on the primeval atom?” 

Lilah shrugged her shoulders. It was easy to say. 
“I don’t know! Why do we?” 

“You ran off, didn’t you? Cut loose? I’ve heard 
rumors—I beg your pardon, but things get about a 
small place like this. Infernal curious, most people. 
They like to eat a pretty woman up; crunch her bones. 
Now, if you were ugly as mud and fat and forty, they’d 
call you ‘emancipated.’ Waving the banner of per¬ 
sonal freedom and all that sort of thing. . . . They’d 
make you out a martyr to unholy matrimony, mean¬ 
ing matrimony which is no go. But since you’re young 
and lovely—very lovely—they’re tearing you to bits 
down there.” 

“Are they?” 


THE TIDE 


249 

“Pm no end sorry for you. Really.” His eyes said 
more. “Doing all this for a man who doesn't appreci¬ 
ate—well, you—” his eyes said. But he was too clever, 
too wary, to put the thought into words. 

A bitterness surged up in Lilah’s heart. Six o’clock. 
And Flagg hadn’t come in. He might have taken a 
train to Rome. She saw him in Rome walking up a 
street in the rain, wearing that fixed smile, alone. Or 
Milan. Another picture. Only this time, she saw him 
sitting in a hotel bed-room in his shirt-sleeves. . . . 
He might have died, up there in the cypress grove. 
He might, even now, be lying on the soaked ground, 
his face pressed into the sodden leaves. 

She got up. “I think you’d better go,” she said. 
“I want to be alone. If you don’t mind.” 

The Englishman rose. She was too miserable to 
sense the danger. He stayed, looking down at her. 
And then he caught her shoulders, pressed her against 
him and kissed her. She could feel the softness of 
his body. She shivered, gasped and pushed him away. 
She hated him. 

“Abominable!” she said. 

“Oh, very well.” 

With a gesture of contempt, as if it really mattered 
very little, he got his hat and went out, slamming the 
door. 

She went upstairs, followed by the black cat and 
the only one of the kittens they had saved. It, too, 
was black, with eyes like jewels and an incredibly 
thin, flexible tail. The cats did not seem to know or 


250 


THE TIDE 

to care whether Lilah suffered, and she wanted them 
to know; she said: “You little brutes! Dont frisk! 

I can’t bear it!” But they frisked on the gondola-bed, 
over it and under it, scratching and leaping, as if noth¬ 
ing had happened. 

Lilah undressed. Then, in a warm negligee, banded 
with fur, her hair under a sort of gypsy cap made of 
purple chiffon, she went into Flagg’s room and peered 
at his things, his brushes, his coats, on hangers, his 
handkerchiefs, in neat piles. She touched everything, 
sensing his dear person. . . . She would wait until 
eight o’clock, and then, if he hadn’t returned, she 
would go out, alone, and look for him in those dark 
woods. 

Eight o’clock came, but she didn’t dare to go out. 
She got into bed, instead, and lay in the dark, listen¬ 
ing to the rain. She was terribly afraid. Life was 
inimical again, and she had lost faith in herself, in her 
ability to be pert and to win success with the misty 
quality of her loveliness. Accepted things, long-estab¬ 
lished ideas, convictions, had failed. There was noth¬ 
ing to go on. . . . She began, reluctantly, almost with 
terror, to look herself straight in the face. She saw 
an image of herself, silly, vain, rushing in pursuit of 
unimportant things. Always things! And where 
had they gotten her? 

A motor, turning into the Vincigliata road, cast a 
swinging light through the windows, across the walls, 
across Aphrodite, imponderable and secretive in her 
niche. . . . 

Flagg! 


251 


THE TIDE 

Her heart stopped. 

They might have come to tell her. . . 

No. The downstairs door opened, closed again, and 
she heard his footsteps, coming, coming. 

She thought: “He’s been cruel. I ought to punish 
him.” But she called him. 

She saw him in the doorway and summoned her 
half-glimpsed self with a passionate and peremptory 
cry. Flagg hesitated, a dim figure, silent, remote. Then 
he moved forward and, quivering, her nerves unsteady, 
she felt him leaning down over her. She could not see 
his face. She could smell the cloth of his coat, wet. 

. . . And with a sudden lifting of her arms, she dragged 
him down to her. He had to kneel. His face pressed 
into her throat. Again she felt his hair, the shape of 
his head. He was warm and alive; he was all of life. 
How could she have doubted, questioned, hesitated, 
when this, this was the answer to everything—to be 
near him. 

“I thought you’d never come. I wanted to tell you 
that I’ll give the money to Robert, all of it. I under¬ 
stand.” 

Flagg said nothing. He sighed. His body relaxed. 
He pressed his face closer against her. His arms went 
around her. . . . Lilah could feel the two cats frisk¬ 
ing over her feet, and she thought: “They know. I’m 
happy. I’m happy.” 

They clasped each other, for the first time, with 
that love which is pity and forgiving and ecstasy. 


XI 


1 ILAH went to Paris. 

In a compartment on the Rome-Lausanne ex- 
-^press, she sat with her chin in her hand, staring 
out of the window at the slow unrolling of the land¬ 
scape, fields, towns, mountains, fields, towns and 
mountains. But she was conscious of being stared at 
from the corridor, and it was pleasant, even exciting, 
to attract attention, after six months of life in the 


country. 

Flagg had not been well, but he had reassured her: 
“I’m all right. Only hurry back. I’m going to miss 
you.” 

How strained and white his face had been when, 
at the station in Florence, he had followed the mov¬ 
ing train for a way, looking up at her with a curious, 
unreadable expression. 

She thought: “He’ll be all right. I mustn’t worry. 

And the further the train was from Florence 
Bologna, Milan, Brigue—the more certain she became 
that Flagg was quite well. She could see him walking 
up the Vincigliata hill, whistling, swinging along with 
the gait of a man who had no enemy. She was com¬ 
forted by this vision. The more she thought about 
it the more she believed in it. And the memory of his 
face at the train in Florence faded, was at length 
252 


THE TIDE 253 

forgotten, since she preferred not to remember. Later, 
she promised herself, she would remember. 

But now. Paris. 

Again she was at that crowded, noisy gateway to 
Paris, that sordid, ringing, clashing place full of people 
with bundles, porters with luggage, soldiers, nuns, 
tourists, a mad jumble of dingy, dusty, worried-look¬ 
ing, crumpled people all going somewhere and in a 
terrible hurry. Florence, everything to do with her 
life there, seemed unreal. How could she have let 
herself suffer so? How stupid of her! It was a mis¬ 
take, dangerous, to concentrate oneself too much; it 
would do her good, do Flagg good, to break the thread 
of their intimacy; both of them had been overanxious 
to prove their right to each other. After all, who knew 
or cared whether they succeeded? Lilah hurried 
through the crowd, refreshed, as if bathed in that cool, 
manifold impersonality. 

She leaned forward in the taxi, staring at Paris, 
searching for some indication of recent wounds. 
None. None! The streets, shining in a thin, cold 
drizzle; a swirl of umbrellas; lights and kiosks; vistas 
converging; and that air of brittle gayety, that some¬ 
thing precise, insouciant, perverse—the same! Lilah 
tapped on the window. “I’ve changed my mind. The 
Ritz.” For two days! Why not? But now she could 
laugh at herself. She knew that she was ridiculous; a 
pension would have done just as well! Only that she 
longed for warmth and color, the pageant, not with¬ 
out meaning, of the worldlings. This would be her 
last bow before the curtain. And that precarious few 


THE TIDE 


2 54 

hundred dollars cabled to Flagg after an interval of 
doubt, of suspense ... her last fling at luxury. 
Make-believe. ... At least, Robert wouldn’t think 
that she had come down in the world! She could 
confront him clothed in the accepted garments of his 
kind, on common ground. . . . She would wire Flagg 
at once: “Ritz. Paris. Love. Lilah.” 

When she saw Robert crossing the lobby of the Ritz 
with that vague, amiable, short-sighted manner, she 
was not surprised. This was the sort of thing that 
was bound to have happened, what, perhaps, she had 
hoped would happen. 

“Lilah! Well, I’ll be damned!” 

They confronted each other. Robert flushed. He 
laughed, offered his hand, remembered, and said mis¬ 
erably: “I suppose this is shocking. I’m awfully 
sorry.” But his question, immediate, with an accent 
of surprise, irritated her: “You’re staying here?” 

“Yes,” she snapped. “Are you?” 

“I’m at the Meurice. I’m dining here with the Gay¬ 
lords, but I can shift ’em, if you say. That lawyer 
needn’t know, and I want to talk to you.” He added: 
“I need to talk to you, Lilah.” 

Lilah considered. “I’ve only just come. I haven’t 
unpacked. I’m fearfully dusty.” 

“I’ll wait.” 

Something reminiscent twisted Robert’s face into a 
sort of grimace. “Oh, Lord, Lilah— Here we are! 
There’s no precedent— What am I supposed to 
say?” 


THE TIDE 


255 

And, out of the past, Lilah flung back at him: 
“Something honest! I’ll dine with you, of course.” 

An admiring look came into Robert’s eyes. “Here, 
then, in an hour,” he said simply. “I’ll wait.” 

Lilah was prompt. She found Robert, characteris¬ 
tically, exactly where she had left him. She thought, 
before he caught sight of her: “This is my husband.” 
And she gave him a quick, appraising look, trying to 
realize what he had been. She failed. He was some 
one she hadn’t known. . . . He turned, and in the 
meeting of their eyes there was an immediate recog¬ 
nition, a searching, reproachful, profoundly intimate 
encounter. Both of them trembled and pity ran 
through them. Lilah felt as if she could not, under 
any circumstances, speak to him. 

“Let’s go where we’ll be alone,” he said. “I know 
a place across the river—decent food, French—we 
won’t see any one we know.” He flushed again. “Oh, 
my lord—don’t misunderstand me. I’m not ashamed! 
Only I hate advertising my emotions.” 

In the taxi, drawn away from him, huddled in her 
furs, Lilah shivered. Life had never seemed more of 
a picture-puzzle; all the pieces lay about her, and she 
could not put them together again. The piece that 
was missing, the necessary piece—Freedom. It was 
the answer to everything. If she could find the mean¬ 
ing of freedom. . . . Every one to-day, old and young, 
cried out for freedom, to put their scattered picture- 
puzzle together with, to make it whole and reasonable 
and recognizable, something to enjoy. Every one 


256 THE TIDE 

searching, picking up now this, now that, expedient 
and finding that nothing fitted, nothing matched. . . . 
Freedom for oneself had been the cry of the genera¬ 
tion. But was there such a thing? Weren’t people, 
lives, inextricably woven together, so that one experi¬ 
ence involved another, one giving another, one selfish¬ 
ness another? She could never be free again because 
of this man at her side. 

She stole a look at his face. There was something 
pathetic in his expression, as if, he too, were groping 
for the missing fragment, baffled by the confusion of 
ideas and morals; pitying her, loving her, despising 
her, yet, in spite of himself, understanding her. 

They were afraid to say anything; afraid and mis¬ 
erable. 

The restaurant, Robert’s choice of a place where 
they’d not see any one, was half-way down a short, 
dark street. He had engaged a private room; before 
a coal fire burning in a shallow grate a table had been 
set for two. The room was small, of the eighteenth 
century, faded, crackled and mellow. And an old 
waiter in an enveloping apron took Lilah’s cloak with 
that paternal gesture which is the gift of inspired 
waiters, waiters of a certain persuasion, a genius, a 
flair. His exit was discreet, but promising, and when 
he returned, with bisque of crayfish, he offered it as an 
artist turns a canvas from the wall; “Voila!” 

Robert’s glance was beseeching. You couldn’t dis¬ 
appoint such a fellow as this waiter; he expected them 
to be jolly! Lilah felt this, too. A room so exquisite. 
The festive air imparted by the bisque , steaming in 


THE TIDE 


257 

real Sevres bowls. Her gown, the last of the trousseau, 
a slip of metal cloth, girdled with flat emerald stones 
set in silver. . . . Suddenly, she felt smooth, like the 
bisque, exclusive and desirable. The walls of the lit¬ 
tle room seemed to shut her away from confusion im 
a world made secure by the tradition of elegance, by 
the permanence of all rare and lovely things. She felt 
again the conviction that she belonged peculiarly in 
this world; it was stimulating, just for an hour or two, 
to pretend that she had never left it. It was stimu¬ 
lating, also, to discover that Robert could still look 
at her as if he found her the most mysterious and de¬ 
lightful woman in the world. Perhaps he wanted her 
back, at any cost— She looked at him with that half¬ 
smile which means: “Do you forgive me?” But she 
waited for him to speak, to commit himself, because 
there was always the memory of Grace Fuller, in a 
gray dress and a clever hat. . . . 

“Lilah,” he said suddenly. He stopped, as if ap¬ 
palled by his audacity. He stretched out his hand and 
she took it. They clasped hands solemnly, with scared 
looks. And the waiter, lowering his eyes, whisked the 
crayfish away and disappeared behind a silk screen 
decorated in the Fragonard manner. 

“Lilah,” Robert began again. He couldn’t go on. 
He squeezed her hand, held fast to it as if he would 
never let it go. “Isn’t this a nice place? Chew told 
me about it. The filet of sole’s famous—better’n 
Marguery. . . . Lilah. . . 

Lilah wanted to laugh. She shook her head, instead, 
and tears came into her eyes; it was easy to cry nowa- 


258 THE TIDE 

days. She wiped them away with the tips of her 
fingers. Then Robert said the one thing he should not 
have said: “It was all my fault, Lilah.” 

The waiter came in again, bearing a silver platter 
with a great dome of a cover. “Filet Ester hazy, he 
announced. He looked as if he had presented them 
with an heir. 

Robert said: “Ah!” He loved good food. Lilah 
remembered how she had grown to wince inwardly 
whenever he leaned forward at the table with that 
look of dedication and rapture, that sort of hovering, 
like a gull over a floating morsel. She remembered 
the way he had of flapping his elbows, as if he were 
skimming down, close, to snatch the tid-bit; only, he 
never snatched; he ate slowly, with the peculiar relish, 
the rapt appreciation of the gourmet. “ Bon!” he said 
in a loud voice. “Tres bon!” 

“Merci f m’sieur!” 

“You’ll want wine, of course, Lilah—champagne; 
what d’you say to champagne?” 

Lilah thought: “Just this once.” She nodded. In 
Florence they had red wine, thin and sour, if they 
had wine at all, wine that puckered her mouth, the 
strong, sharp wine of Dionysius. But this—a pale 
amber bubble, an eternal spring of levity and careless¬ 
ness, of love and daring, of wit and dreaming. . . . 
She lifted the glass and a little light danced on her 
bare arm, leaped to the table-cloth, frisked and quiv¬ 
ered, a drunken little light. . . . 

“I remember . . .” Robert began. He stopped. 

The waiter hurried away, as if he were saying: “One 


THE TIDE 259 

moment! One little moment! I’ll leave you alone as 
soon as I can.” 

A perverse notion caused Lilah to say: “How is dear 
old Grace?” 

She could see the slow, inevitable flush, self-con¬ 
scious, painful, the sudden mistiness of his eyes. 
Elaborately careless, he said: “She’s awfully well.” 

“Where is she?” 

“Now?” 

Robert drained his glass, set it down again. “At 
the Point.” 

“Your grandfather isn’t ill?” 

“No.” 

Lilah thought: “I see. He’s going to marry her.” 
And she felt a tightness around her heart. 

“Grace is awfully fond of you, Lilah.” 

“Is she?” Lilah smiled. “Are you going to marry 
her?” 

“Damn it all,” Robert cried. He pushed his plate 
away with a violent gesture. “No!” 

“Meaning you are,” Lilah said sweetly. “Mean¬ 
ing, it’s none of my business. But it is! After all, 
I’m your wife, my dear.” 

“Don’t be too modern, Lilah.” But in spite of him¬ 
self, he smiled. Lilah couldn’t be sure. She smiled 
back at him while the waiter filled her glass again. . . . 
They were all three playing a game. What if they 
should speak what was in their minds? The waiter 
would probably say: “It’s late. I’m tired. I want to 
be at home with my family, reading the newspaper by 
the lamp, with my tired feet in slippers.” Robert 


260 THE TIDE 

would probably say: “I want you, and I want Grace, 
too. I don’t respect you. I love you and I want my 
freedom.” And she would say: “I love Flagg. But 
I’m afraid.” Because, it was true, she was afraid; 
she was at the mercy of her fear. She could not re¬ 
member the wonderful self she had been a week ago, 
three days ago; it seemed far away, unreal, the self 
that had loved Flagg, that had promised to give seven¬ 
ty-five thousand lire to Robert, the self that had 
feared nothing, nothing. That self had fluttered away 
out of this warm, bright room, away from her body 
into the darkness outside and there it was waiting, 
mournful and alone, for Lilah. Which was Lilah? 
This, or that other? 

“Salade, madame” 

A plate. A deep bowl. A wooden spoon. Lettuce. 
String beans, very green. How did the French do it? 
And a dressing flavored faintly with garlic. 

“I’m going into my grandfather’s business,” Robert 
said. He mixed the salad thoroughly, tossing and stir¬ 
ring it, his face intent. “Seriously. I had to do some¬ 
thing. I found that sitting in the shade wasn’t 
enough; I had to plant some trees of my own. You 
remember what Dave Harum said about a dog and his 
fleas. ...” He paused to stare at the salad. Then 
he said suddenly: “It was a good thing you left me. 
Good for me, I mean.” 

“Oh.” 

“I was counting on you to make something of me. 
It’s a damn sight more fun to make something of my¬ 
self. A rum world, Lilah. We’re put here for some 


THE TIDE 261 

reason. I didn’t used to think so. Now I know! I’m 
not inquiring the reason. It’s enough to be sure that 
the lessons we learn aren’t wasted.” 

“Frontage, madame?” 

Lilah looked at the creamy pie-shaped wedge of 
Camembert. . . . Robert was reminding her that she 
had failed. “Oui,” she said to the waiter. She must 
not let him sense her humiliation. She must make him 
see that she ; too, was triumphant. And the image of 
Flagg, walking by the train as it pulled out of the sta¬ 
tion, assailed her. She said: “Mmm! Good cheese! 
Try it. Delicious.” 

“I prefer American cheese. They make a cheese 
in California—I’ve forgotten what they call it—a rich 
orange color, finely flavored . . .” 

“Then you’re glad I left?” 

He looked up. His eyes were startled. “No. I 
loved you.” 

“Don’t you love me now?” 

The waiter disappeared at the word love. The verb 
aimer ... to love, I love, you love . . . these peo¬ 
ple were amants, after all. 

Robert got up. He came around the table. Lilah 
said nothing, did nothing to stop him. He came 
slowly, but his intention was in his deliberate gesture. 
And Lilah thought: “This is my worst self.” A wave 
of pity engulfed her; she closed her eyes. She 
wanted, wanted everything Robert could offer her; 
her mind flew back to the “Villino Sans-Souci”; she 
did not see herself in Flagg’s arms, submerged in that 
deep rapture; she saw herself, alone. She waited. 


262 THE TIDE 

. . . But Robert did not touch her. With a feeling 
of faintness, she opened her eyes again. Robert was 
standing just there, his napkin in his hand, as if he 
had been frozen. “You didn’t mean that, Lilah.” 

“Sit down! The waiter—” 

The waiter appeared, very sorry, with downcast 
eyes, just as Robert hurriedly regained his place. This 
time, the talented one bore a silver tray full of pas¬ 
tries, fat chocolate ones and long, snaky green ones 
and twisted ones full of cream, and pink ones upon 
which a devilish clever pastry-cook had painted 
flowers and bow-knots of sugar. 

“You haven’t told me about your grandfather,” 
Lilah said, in her special voice, eyeing the pastries as 
if she hated them. “The green one—that one— 
please.” 

“Oui, madame.” 

Robert answered that Junius was well. “Wonder¬ 
ful old chap! You can’t imagine how gratified he is 
that I’ve taken hold. He’d about given me up.” 

“I suppose Grace Fuller’s responsible?” 

Robert flushed again. He said nothing. Lilah 
smiled and stretched out her hand. “Cigarette, please. 
And don’t frown like that! Why shouldn’t you marry 
Grace Fuller if you want to? That’s why you’ve 
come to Paris, isn’t it? For her sake. Not for mine! 
One of the last things you said was that you’d never 
divorce me. . . .” 

“Lilah. . . ” 

At last the waiter was gone. They were alone in 
the room. 


THE TIDE 


263 

Lilah put the cigarette between her lips and tilted 
her head: “Light, please.” And while Robert struck 
the match she watched him, her eyes enigmatic. A 
quiver passed over his face. His hand trembled. 
“Lilah. Don’t.” 

“Don’t what?” 

“You’re trying to get at me. God knows why.” 
He tossed the match away. “After all, we have things 
to say that aren’t easy to say. It’s all very well to 
pretend that what we’re doing to-night is usual—it’s 
wrong, terrible, and I’m sorry we tried it. We’re 
married. That’s my ring, isn’t it? You left another 
man to come here with me and make believe before a 
waiter that we’re friends. Friends! Let’s be honest. 
We’ve failed at a great undertaking. We ought to be 
down on our knees praying for a chance to make 
good! I’ll take my half of the blame. Neither of 
us tried. I loved you. I still love you. I thought I 
didn’t. I told Grace Fuller that I didn’t. But she’d 
be the first to welcome us, if we were to go back to¬ 
gether.” 

He paused, his hands, with the fingers interlocked, 
pressed violently together. “There’s such a thing as 
moral insensibility. . . . You’ve had your fling. 
What has it proven?” 

Before she could answer he went on: “What does 
that sort of thing prove to any one? No one will 
profit by our separation, not even Grace, because I 
love you, and she’ll know it.” 

“Happiness—” 

“A chimera of childhood! I’d like to blot the word 


2 6 4 THE TIDE 

out of the language. You were after something for 
yourself—something ready-made, something you 
didn’t have to work for. What you had me Well 
—I want you to come back. Try again. 

“Did Grace Fuller know that you intended to in¬ 
vite me, after what has happened, to go back where I 
will always be on suffrance—an object of suspicion, 
perhaps of amusement?” 

“I don’t understand,” Robert said impatiently, 
“why you harp on Grace Fuller. The issue is between 
you and me.” 

“But if you promised her—” 

“I sometimes wonder whether you have forgotten 
that you are married to me—you behave as if you con¬ 
sidered the whole thing an episode, both of us ab¬ 
solved— I haven’t promised anything.” 

Lilah got up. There was a divan near the fire, up¬ 
holstered in shabby yellow sateen. Lilah’s cloak lay 
across the end, Robert’s overcoat, his muffler and 
gloves beside it. She thought: “How domesticated. 
Like Robert’s imagination. How can I make him 
understand when I don’t understand myself? She 
felt suddenly tired. The bubble of gayety had burst, 
was gone. She had a passing, a poignant regret at the 
inevitable bursting of all such pretty bubbles. . . . 

“If I fail with you,” Robert was saying, “the whole 
past has been wasted. You can’t erase marriage by 
simply running away from it. Or, like the magician, 
by exchanging one marriage for another ... a sort 
of social legerdemain . . . dangerous, because I be¬ 
lieve once married always married. ... I may be 


THE TIDE 


265 

old-fashioned. I dare say I am making myself ridicu¬ 
lous. . . . These things go deeper than words. If I 
could make you see what I’ve seen. . . .” 

Lilah wanted to say: “But I don’t love you.” She 
didn’t dare say it because there was something she 
wanted to hold to, a thread, a fragile link between 
herself and security. She recognized the ugly need of 
security; her own weakness made it imperative that 
she should hold Robert off until her own future was 
certain, until she had found the strength to admit that 
other self or to close that self out forever. A little 
time. If life only didn’t press you so. . . . 

Robert followed; he, too, seemed to press close, 
although he stood some distance away, his hands still 
tightly pressed together in a curious attitude of suppli¬ 
cation and misery. “You’re afraid of public opinion. 
... At the Point, you have nothing to fear. We can 
prove, by the dignity”—he hesitated—“the decency 
of our lives that there is such a thing as courage. Both 
of us will need it, but not because of criticism; we 
were both born into a reckless society. You can’t tell 
black from white, nowadays! And yet—we’re like 
ships without rudders, drifting, drifting in the open 
sea, all pretending that we’re getting somewhere. We 
call it revolt; we call it breaking chains; we call it by 
a dozen high-sounding names, ‘reality’ among them. 
But none of us is satisfied.” He suddenly pointed at 
her and raised his voice. “You’re not!” 

“I am,” she said. “I have love.” 

Robert turned away. His face was drawn. He 
looked old. He went back to the table and poured out 


266 THE TIDE 

another glass of champagne. The rattle of ice in the 
bucket, the clink of glass against glass, summoned the 
waiter who re-appeared, blinking, as if he had dozed 
off behind the screen. “M’sieur?” At once he began 
to clear the table, his sleepy look giving way to a half¬ 
smile, as if he were thinking of the embrace he had 
probably interrupted. But he wanted to go home. 
It was ten o’clock and his feet were tired. 

“Let’s go somewhere,” Robert said angrily. “We 
can’t talk here. And I’ve got to convince you—” 

He did not glance at the bill but paid it with the 
indifference to other people’s honesty which charac- 
terized him. 

“I have convictions,” he said in the cab. “I’m not 
the flaccid fish I appear to be. There was a time 
when I approved of men, and women, too, smashing 
down every door that kept them from experience. It 
was exciting to watch the new generation kicking con¬ 
vention in the face. It cleared things up, for a while. 
I foresaw a new race of straight thinkers, purged of 
fear. What you did didn’t shock me. It seemed 
necessary—” 

He turned to her, trying to read her face in the un¬ 
even flow of light. “Where’ll we go? We can t ride 
around Paris all night.” 

“Let’s dance,” she said. 

“Dance?” 

After a hesitation, a silence she could not read, he 
rapped on the window and ordered the driver to take 
them to a club in the Bois. Lilah thought: “This will 
give me time.” 


THE TIDE 267 

At the club, a smart restaurant given over to a jazz 
orchestra and a dancing floor, food had taken second 
place. Lilah was stimulated by the rush of waiters, 
the whirl of dancers, the cascading crystal chandeliers, 
the monotonous and passionate rhythm of the music. 
(Florence, the “Villino Sans-Souci” were part of a 
dream. She had dreamed of the melancholy weeks of 
rain, the somber, suggestive call of birds in the cypress 
groves. This was being awake. Her body came alive. 
She felt herself swaying to the provocative melody as 
Robert frowned at a card. “What’ll you have, Lilah?” 
“Anything!” While he ordered, she let her cloak slip 
away from her bare shoulders; instinctively, she fell 
into the attitude of fashionable unconcern. “Any¬ 
thing.” The rite of dining was lost in the need to 
dance. People came here to indulge their senses in 
the barbaric measures of a simple people unknown to 
them; the negroes, perspiring, hysterical, carried be¬ 
yond themselves by their success, swayed, jerked, 
stamped, shouted. Their leader, holding a violin at 
arm’s length, played a melody; the voice of the in¬ 
strument, thin, sweet and penetrating, rose above the 
relentless tom-toming of the drums, the frantic un¬ 
ceasing blare of horns, an accompaniment soulless and 
exciting. ... In a pool of light, revolving, the danc¬ 
ers seemed beyond themselves. Other dancers, revolv¬ 
ing, moved in the mirrors, silent, remote, like a com¬ 
pany of ghosts. . . . 

Robert said politely: “Will you?” 

They rose. He clasped her with a sort of shiver, 
almost a reluctance, and they were caught by the tide, 


268 THE TIDE 

whirled and buffeted. Lilah’s face was pressed against 
Robert’s shoulder. He noticed again the faint and 
seductive odor of sandalwood; he sensed the peculiar 
flexibility of her body—she had always seemed to be 
both fragile and powerful. He saw her eyes, wide 
with excitement, lifted to his face, scrutinizing him— 
did she love or hate him, or was she only trying to 
decide whether she could, after all, live with him 
again? “Wonderful music.” Robert’s clasp tight¬ 
ened. And he felt a deep pity, for her, for himself, 
for all these foolish, fatuous, bewildered people twirl¬ 
ing around a polished floor in each other’s arms. “Yes, 
wonderful,” he said. 

At their table again, confronted by a chafing dish in 
which chicken and cream and mushrooms bubbled 
energetically, Robert remarked that he hadn’t any 
appetite. But Lilah had. “I haven’t been anywhere; 
I haven’t seen any one, or done anything, for six 
months. . . . I’m really enjoying myself. Am I 
wicked?” And she held out her plate. “I’m starved. 
Wolfish! What’s that they’re playing? We never 
hear anything in Italy except Neapolitan love 
songs and the ‘Merry Widow’ waltz. Jazz . . . 
after all . . . it’s my native music. It goes to my 
head. . . .You dance better than you used to, Rob¬ 
ert. . . 

She glanced up. Her expression changed; a look of 
panic flashed across her eyes. “People I know—” 

A flurry of women, slim, bare-armed, in the simple 
gowns of the period. . . . Aureoles of hair, short, 


THE TIDE 269 

frizzed. . . . Make-up. . . . The fashionable drawl 
of the young New Yorker. . . . 

“Lilah! Robert! Of all the cool ones! Honey¬ 
mooning in Paris. . . . What’s the plot? We thought 
you two had parted forever! Lilah, where’s the vil¬ 
lain? Did you park him in Florence? What a lovely 
dress. . . . Poiret?” 

Chairs were brought. Three amiable and vivacious 
Frenchmen were presented to Lilah, to Robert. Bare 
shoulders, long white arms, manicured finger tips, a 
medley of perfumes, cigarette smoke. . . . “Have you 
been to—” Have you seen—?” Talk crossed talk. 
Lilah, on her guard, but eager, eager, as if she were 
again drinking champagne, tasting the little golden 
bubbles of gayety. Poor Lilah! Robert pitied her and 
understood her; but more than ever he wanted her, 
because he divined, beneath the fixed and purposeful 
animation of her face, her profound confusion. 

The music began again after a pause no longer than 
a heart beat, and Lilah whirled away in the arms of 
one of the Frenchmen. Robert rose politely and 
claimed the girl at his right, a slim, arrogant young 
thing with sharp shoulder-blades and shingled hair; 
she had the misty, brushed-in eyes of an Oriental, the 
lips of an odalisque. “You don’t remember me, do 
you? I’m Marian Forsythe—I live near the inlet; we 
can see your house on clear days. I know your grand¬ 
father. Wonderful music, isn’t it? I’m over here 
with the Careys. Isn’t Paris awful in winter? We’re 
going to Algiers next week. I like to run away from 
things, don’t you? I get bored so easily.” She twisted 


270 THE TIDE 

a little in his arms. He felt her hand, sharp, nervous, 
against his shoulder. “I must say I think Lilah’s a 
sport. She tried it out, anyway. I suppose she liked 
you best, after all. If more people were sensible about 
such things. . . 

Robert interrupted sharply: “You don’t know any¬ 
thing about it.” 

He had an hysterical desire to shake her. If men 
didn’t protect girls like this against their own igno¬ 
rance, the world would be better off. “I’m getting to 
be a damned reactionary,” he thought. “It may be 
progress, it may be transition—whatever it is, I’m out 
of it.” 

He was too angry to dance, but Marian Forsythe 
was inexhaustible. “Don’t be a grouch,” she advised 
him sweetly. “Lilah’s perfectly happy with Captain 
Romain. Let’s waltz.” 

It was past three o’clock when he succeeded in get¬ 
ting Lilah away. The little group waited beneath the 
glass and bronze porte-cochere of the restaurant while 
a carriage-man in a white rubber overcoat pursued 
taxicabs, shrieking upon a tin whistle, vanishing #nd 
reappearing like an energetic ghost. A thin drizzle 
fell aslant the somber shadows of massed chestnut 
trees, tiny, broken splinters, glass-like, shivering out 
of a black sky. The women huddled in their wraps, 
their faces covered, their feet, in delicate slippers, ex¬ 
posed to the rain, to the sharp wind that whipped 
their floating chiffons about their ankles. The men 
were still fresh. Only Robert was tired, tired and 


THE TIDE 271 

childishly disappointed. Everything — Lilah’s eight 
months away from him, his rage, his love, his idealism, 
all of it was stupid, futile, because of these people and 
their casual worldliness; as if suffering and loneliness 
and pride and longing were inconsiderable, as if noth¬ 
ing were real but the things he had grown to despise. 
How on earth could he make it clear to her that there 
could be no satisfaction for either of them until they 
had discharged their duty. . . . And, suddenly, he 
was too tired to try. . . . 

That ghost of a carriage-man came panting back 
with a taxicab, and Robert selfishly took it for him¬ 
self and Lilah. The others would have to wait. He 
hated them. . . . Lilah leaned against him. “I’ve 
had such a good time, Bobsie. I didn’t realize how 
starved I’ve been.” 

“You forget—you haven’t told me anything about 
yourself.” 

“Must I? Now? It’s so late.” She yawned. “I’m 
so sleepy!” 

Away down the boulevard, like a pale new moon, 
Robert saw the Arc du Triomphe. An irrelevant 
thotght came to him. Even heroism was futile. Great 
gestures. Wasted. That soldier, unknown, who was 
buried there, wouldn’t he have been better off in his 
orchard, his shop, his palace? But this had nothing 
to do with Lilah, with himself. He pulled himself to¬ 
gether. “What do you want me to do? I’ve got to 
know.” 

“Can’t we talk to-morrow?” 

“One thing I promise: If you decide to come back, 


272 THE TIDE 

I’ll never question you. I’m not magnanimous. I 
realize that you would hate me if I made you feel that 
I had forgiven you. . . . We’ll consider the past eight 
months erased.” 

“Not erased! Mine!” 

“As you please.” 

They sat very stiffly, scarcely breathing, not look¬ 
ing at each other. 

“Telegram for you, madam.” 

“For me?” 

Lilah took the thin envelope. Yes. “Mrs. Robert 
Peabody.” She got into the elevator. Two men and 
a woman stood there, laughing, while the car soared 
np—one, two, three— Troisieme! 

“Madame.” 

She did not open the telegram until she had lighted 
the light by the bed and had thrown aside her wrap. 
She kept assuring herself that Flagg had answered her 
wire. Some such message as: “All well.” Or: “I 
miss you.” 

“Advise your immediate return. Major Flagg seriously 
ill. 

“Bacci.” 

Bacci! Who on earth was Bacci? Her heart con¬ 
tracted, expanded again. The doctor. That man who 
had come out to the Ponte a Mensola in a hired cab. 
. . . She sat down, trembling. Her hands shook so 
that the thin paper envelope rattled. 


THE TIDE 


2 73 

“Seriously ill.” 

Dying. “Immediate return.” 

She thought: “While I was dancing.” 

She began to undress. She tore the fragile tissue 
because she hated it. She wanted to destroy the fact, 
to blot out the visible evidence, strip naked. She heard 
herself sobbing. ... A curious, unfamiliar sound, as 
if some one else were sobbing in another room. Her 
eyes were dry. She took her hair down and placed 
the pins in a neat pile. She must start at once; she 
must get to him. “Because,” she said aloud to her 
reflection, “I love him.” Now, she knew, Flagg 
wouldn’t believe her. If she got there; if she was in 
time—something about her would show him that she 
had forgotten, that she had betrayed herself, and he 
would say: “I never believed.” And he would go 
away, without her. That seemed the most terrible 
possibility of all—that at the end his eyes might shut 
her out. . . . 

She glanced at her watch, wound it carefully. “I’ll 
bathe, dress. By that time it will be daylight and I 
can make arrangements.” 

But when she was dressed, her veil adjusted, every¬ 
thing packed, it was still dark. She threw the window 
wide open and leaned on the sill, conscious of a cool 
current of air, a dampness rising from the wet pave¬ 
ments. A single pedestrian down there crossed the 
street at an angle, wavering, as if uncertain of a des¬ 
tination, and she thought: “I am like that.” The 
night is so intimate. She was alone with the night. 
Paris seemed a little place, all.the lives gathered under 


274 THE TIDE 

that roof of darkness, all the lives helpless, pathetic 
in sleep, their defenses down. “I am alone.” Not 
since her father died had she been so alone. And she 
was afraid, afraid of death, of what she might be 
going to see, of the way that doctor would look at her, 
of Flagg, struggling with his enemy, alone. Every 
one was alone. Alone and afraid. She felt suddenly 
that she could not go to Florence. She would tear 
up the telegram, pretend she hadn’t heard, and they 
would wire her that it was over, Flagg was dead. . . . 

But even then the sky seemed to deepen, to become 
more dense, blacker. And a shaft of light sprang to 
the apex, opened, like a fan. Dawn. 

Immediately there was a stir in the city. A stir of 
sparrows in the eaves. A stir of little, skulking peo¬ 
ple in the alleys. A stir of smoke from innumerable 
chimneys. 

Lilah got to her feet. She was shivering. Because 
she saw that if she kept Robert off, prevaricated, per¬ 
haps promised him that she would return, there would 
be a way back, out of that other darkness, later. . . . 

But Flagg was in Florence, alone. She saw him, 
lying on his right side, with his arm under his head, 
struggling silently, not saying a word—as if he and 
his heart crashed together, like two dark, insane men 
on horses, tilting, splintering against each other, again 
and again. 

She ought to go to Flagg, because she loved him. 
Why had God made her afraid of ugliness? Flagg 


THE TIDE 275 

was ugly because he was suffering. If she could only 
be spared! If only she didn’t have to go! 

She went to the telephone. “What time is it?” 

She had meant to ask about trains. “Cmg heures 
et demie, madame” 

She put the instrument down again and sat on the 
bed, rocking back and forth with her arms folded, as 
if she were trying to put her thoughts to sleep. The 
room was still dark. The windows were gray. A 
hum rose from the streets, a silvery clink of chains 
along the wet asphalt. . . . She was envious of any 
one going anywhere. . . . Only not to be herself. 

For an instant she was in Florence; she could smell 
the damp plastered walls of the house; the odor of 
wet stone and moss and verbena from the garden; 
Flagg’s pipe. A pang of memory. Herself, dragging 
Flagg down to her. The feel of his hair, furry, cool. 

“I love him so!” she said again, aloud. 

But to be poor. To be back where she had started, 
only weaker. A woman who couldn’t do anything, a 
fool, a pretty fool. 

If Flagg died, he would never know that she had 
promised Robert. . . . 

Then why not lie? 

Because she couldn’t. 

She was afraid of life itself. She wanted to hide 
behind pretenses, behind beauty, behind her own charm, 
behind what Robert offered her. But she would have 
to go to Florence and watch Flagg die. Something new 
and wonderful was being born in her—that other self 


276 THE TIDE 

was thrusting up, like a plant, like the beginnings of a 
great tree, through the frightened Lilah that crouched 
on the bed. 

There was no use in going back to the Point, to the 
warmth of that fireside, because she had never be¬ 
lieved in it; it had never, from the beginning, been 
hers. 

The only thing that had ever happened to her that 
belonged wholly to her was that moment in the dark 
when Flagg had sighed against her breast and the cats 
had frisked over her feet. That moment was hers. 
She had made it. She had created it out of pain 
and longing and honesty. 

It was time that she stopped pretending. 

She wrote hurriedly to Robert: 

“My dear Robert: 

“Thank you. But I must go back to Florence. You 
have been very kind. Later, if you want a divorce, I will 
do everything to help you. I am leaving your grand¬ 
mother’s emerald crown, the bracelet and some money in 
the care of the hotel management, with the understanding 
that you will call for them and identify yourself. The 
money I got for the pearls. I was foolish and wrong. But 
I can’t buy them back for you. I’m sorry. 

“LlLAH.” 

She addressed the envelope and sealed it. She felt 
very small and unimportant, burned out, dry; she 
must look, at last, definitely old. She went to the 
telephone again, and, this time, she asked about trains. 


THE TIDE 277 

The compartment was crowded. People kept pop¬ 
ping in and out, asking questions, shouting, losing 
their heads, kissing noisily. “Au ’voir! Au ’voir 
maman!” . “Mignon!” “Here’s your bag. And the 
fruit. I’ll put them here.” “Take care of yourself.” 
Anxious faces, detached, drifting along the platform, 
looking in or looking ahead, eagerly, as if everything 
counted on their getting somewhere. Here was life 
again—so terribly important and silly! Lilah sat by 
the window, her veil thrown back, staring out. She 
half expected to see Robert, pale, distraught, deter¬ 
mined, searching for her in the crowd. “Here you 
are!” And it would be taken out of her hands. He 
would make her turn back; he would make her see 
that what she had intended to do was wrong. Rob¬ 
ert didn’t come. An Englishman in a trench coat 
with shabby shoes searched and searched for some 
one. His eyes were like a dog’s and his pinched, 
brown face was puckered with longing. At last he 
saw whoever it was. “There you are! Hallo! Just 
in time!” And he leaped into one of the compart¬ 
ments with a bound. . . . Life was such fun for the 
living, for those who believed in it. . . . 

The train was moving. A telegraph boy rushed 
past, shouting: “Madame de Lattre!” But no one 
paid any attention to him. The Englishman leaped 
down again, his face very red, his eyes afire, and 
snatched off his hat. “Good-by! Good-by!” Steam. 
A flood of sunlight. Darkness again. 

“Would madame object?” 

And the little Frenchman in the corner of the com- 


278 THE TIDE 

partment got up, stepped politely but firmly over every 

body and closed the window. 

It was raining when the train drew into the Santa 
Maria Novella Station at Florence. Dusk was shut¬ 
ting down, blotting out the towers, as if snuffing lighted 
candles; one by one they disappeared. Lilah had been 
closed in a compartment with four soldiers, noisy, 
self-conscious bersaglieri who had angled for her at¬ 
tention all the way down from Bologna. She had 
sat like a stone, with her eyes lowered. One of the 
soldiers had kept looking at himself in a little mirror; 
he combed his hair with a small, steel comb and 
smoothed his eyebrows. He wanted her to admire 
him. Whenever he said anything, his black, polished 
eyes rolled in her direction. . . . 

The train seemed to disgorge its passengers; it was 
like a long, spiney dragon vomiting people. People 
spilled from the open doors, mingled on the platform, 
crashed together—and through it all porters bawled 
“facchino!” One of them snatched at Lilah’s bag, 
her coat, her umbrella, angrily, with determination, 
and rushed toward the cab-stand, shoving his way 
through the crowd. Lilah cried, “Don’t hurry!” But 
he paid no attention, because, if he hurried, he knew 
he could get other customers and more pennies. A 
row of cabbies had backed into the square; they 
snapped their whips and shrieked at Lilah as she hur¬ 
ried after the implacable porter through the rain. 
Everyone was conspiring to get her to the Ponte a 


THE TIDE 279 

Mensola ... if only there hadn’t been any cabs, a 
delay, somehow . . . 

She tipped the angry porter and the cab jerked 
forward, bouncing over the cobbles, bouncing, bounc¬ 
ing. The cabman’s umbrella dripped on Lilah’s feet. 
Had it been raining for five days? The rain fright¬ 
ened her; it was sullen and unkind, a purposeful tor¬ 
ment. Puddles bubbled, the sidewalks were covered 
with tiny silver explosions and the great eaves poured 
out amber floods that gurgled in the gutters. And 
now it was dark. 

“Seriously ill.” 

Was Bacci with him? Who was with him? What 
should she do? She asked herself suddenly and 
sharply what she should do if she found him dying? 
And at the thought, she wanted the cabman to say 
that he couldn t go on. She wanted some one to keep 
her from what she must see and do. But the cab 
jolted forward, turning corners recklessly, clattering 
over car-tracks, rolling smoothly, unexpectedly, on 
stretches of asphalt. Lilah stared out at the people 
and the lights, at faces caught and fixed in a brief 
immobility. She tried not to remember what was 
so precious and terrible. Yet her thoughts were un¬ 
conquerable, rapacious; they fastened on her con¬ 
sciousness, and at last she sank back, defeated. 

Love. 

The word challenged her. She struck it away. She 
beat it back. It seemed to her that from the begin¬ 
ning she had been a prisoner, a woman too conscious 


280 the TIDE 

of herself, tormented by herself, fascinated by her¬ 
self, like that coxcomb of a bersagliere. If she could 
escape from herself, she might find what she craved, 
the freedom she must have or— But when you needed 
to know these things, you were too selfish, too happy to 
know them I When you were happy, the debt piled 
up and you were asked to pay it when you no longer 
cared. 

The rain, incessant, indifferent, slanted out of a 
black sky. ... A tram, brilliantly lighted, passed 
with a rumble, and Lilah glimpsed a row of people, 
unconscious of her, laughing and talking. A baby 
pressed its nose against the window spangled with 
big, white drops, like quicksilver, and the baby’s 
nose was flattened, pressed out of shape ... the tram 
passed, and Lilah was alone again in the darkness of 
the cab. She began to listen, attentively, to the clop 
of the horse’s hoofs on the wet pavement, as if, ab¬ 
sorbed in that rhythmic, hollow sound, time would 
stretch out, and she would never, never arrive at her 
destination. . . . 

The cab lurched. They were on the dirt road, 
turning across the bridge, beginning the sharp climb 
... a light in the window! 

“Hurry!” she cried out. 

She stood in the rain, her hands shaking, to pay 
the cab man. He swung himself down, grunting. It 
was a long drive out from the city on such a night, 
and his horse was tired. ... He struck a match 
and scrutinized the coins Lilah gave him. What on 


THE TIDE 281 

earth was one supposed to tip; he looked disgusted— 
she gave him an extra five lire and he thanked her, 
as if he had been cheated and taken advantage of 
by a foreigner. “Good-night.” 

Lilah opened the gate and stumbled up the path 
between the cypresses. The great pointed trees, so 
old, so quiet, so superior to the brief and unimpor¬ 
tant tragedies of men, shook down a heavy splattering 
of rain. . . . 

The door opened. A strange silhouette against the 
light . . . 

“I have been expecting you.” 

“Can I see him?” 

“Yes.” 

She searched this man’s face. Behind glasses, his 
eyes were curious and tender. “I’ll take off my things. 
I’m wet and cold.” He seemed to be bowing, standing 
aside to let her pass. She went upstairs and the doc¬ 
tor followed, quietly, as if there were no hurry. No 
hurry at all. This struck her as ominous. But she 
did not dare to ask how Flagg was. Something pre¬ 
vented her from questioning the doctor, from, even, 
looking at him. At the top of the stairs she paused, 
stricken with fear. “Which—which room?” 

He pointed. “In there.” 

In his own room! She turned to her door, opened 
it, went in and faced her mirror. It seemed neces¬ 
sary to remove her hat, to go in to Flagg hat¬ 
less. . . . 

She powdered, rouged, touched her lips with a per¬ 
fumed stick of carmine paste. 


282 THE TIDE 

In the hall, the doctor was waiting, his hands in 
his pockets. 

“Signora” he began. 

Lilah threw out her hands. “No. Don’t tell me. 

I can’t bear any more. I want to see him.” 

She pushed him aside and went in. 

How tall he was. She had forgotten, in five days, 
how tall he was. His head, dark, round, rumpled, 
was deep in the pillow. Some one had put a news¬ 
paper over the light. 

For no reason, with a rush of feeling, she was proud 
to be coming back to him. It was all right. She 
was safe. She had been decent. She had done what 
he expected of her. Now, perhaps, he would let her 
into his eyes. . . . 

She tiptoed. She stood over him. . . . Asleep. 

She touched his hand. 

He was mischievous in sleep, a satyr again, smil¬ 
ing. . . . 

“Signora.” 

Suddenly she turned and ran back, away from the 
bed. Her legs moved strangely; her arms jerked. 
“I can’t bear it.” Yet he was beautiful, beautiful 
in death. . . . 

“He died an hour ago, Signora. I am terribly sorry. 
I did everything—possible.” 

Through a burst of tears, uncontrollable, humiliat¬ 
ing, an agony of tears, Lilah cried: “I’ll go back to¬ 
morrow and look at him. . . . Not now! Don’t ask 
me to, now! Is he dead?” 

The doctor nodded. “An hour ago,” he repeated. 


THE TIDE 283 

Lilah went downstairs. The doctor had been sit¬ 
ting in Flagg’s chair by the desk and a cigarette still 
burned in an ash-tray. He had been reading some 
of those scattered sheets of manuscript, Flagg’s last 
work. Now he stooped and gathered them up, with¬ 
out self-consciousness or apology. “A remarkable 
mind,” he said. 

Lilah huddled in a corner of the divan, dabbing 
at her eyes with a handkerchief. She shivered. Her 
teeth knocked together. Yet behind the atrocious con¬ 
fusion of her thoughts she was grateful that she had 
not arrived two hours sooner. Another idea fought 
to the surface, seemed to explode in her brain, to 
shatter her—she was alone. She had lost love. . . . 
And she saw herself, night after night, endless, identi¬ 
cal nights, lying in her bed, her body rigid beneath 
the bed-covers. She had so little to remember and 
so much time to remember in—her experience reduced 
itself to that one victorious moment when Flagg had 
loved her without question—and there was no com¬ 
fort in remembering. . . . 

“I cannot offer my sympathy,” the doctor was say¬ 
ing, “in the usual terms. I understand so well what it 
means to find oneself alone, the physical self cheated 
of the comforting reality, the spiritual self unaccus¬ 
tomed. . . . Later, a week, a month, a year, it will 
be more difficult for you. Then, suddenly, you will 
find relief—in work, new interests, another love.” 

“Don’t!” 

He spread out his hands. “Inevitable! This man 
has gone. But you remain. You must progress. Your 


2 8 4 THE TIDE 

education, if you will permit me to say so, is not 

complete. His, I dare say, was ... 

He put the typewritten pages back on the desk. 

“Tell me about him.” 

He leaned forward, offering a curious, leather cig¬ 
arette case. “You smoke?” 

“Yes.” 

She saw his hand as he held the match for her, 
a hand at once sensitive and acquisitive; there was a 
large ring on one of the fingers, and Lilah thought: 
“How Italian!” 

“You’re shivering. Give me your hands. Steady 
now! You mustn’t let go, signora. It’s devilish hard 
to pull oneself back.” 

“You speak English very well.” 

“My mother was English. But I was born in Persia 
and educated in Germany. Ah. Your pulse is bet¬ 
ter. Breath. Deep. Deeper! That’s it. Now, 
smoke? Later, I’ll get some coffee for you. I let 
the servant go. But I have made myself very much at 
home here. ... I used to know your poet. Before 
his exile, he was an extravagant host. A charming, in¬ 
nocent fellow who enjoys his evil reputation. He is, 
actually, religious, but he is ashamed of his inclina¬ 
tion and attempts to deceive us with abominable clap¬ 
trap. . . . You’re all right. All right.” 

“You’ll stay here to-night?” 

“Of course.” 

“It is very kind of you. I can’t help shivering. 
Something in me is whirring—like a wheel 

She had to try, at least. She was ashamed to shake 


THE TIDE 285 

and chatter before this stranger. He drew up a chair 
and sat before her, with his elbows on his knees. Then, 
for the first time, she looked at him. He was short 
and had ginger-colored hair and a ginger-colored beard 
streaked with gray. His face was lean; the skin 
was dry and tight, drawn over the bones so that you 
saw the structure, the modeling, extraordinarily pre¬ 
cise and fine. His eyes were the color of moss agates, 
small, brilliant and inquisitive. 

“I think I can sleep,” she said abruptly. 

Her lids were heavy. She stopped trembling and 
yawned. Her head fell back against the cushions. 
She felt the doctor’s eyes, appraising her, but she 
could not meet the attack. Nothing was left of her 
audacity. This drowsiness was like a drug. And 
little by little consciousness of what had happened 
slipped away. She would start, gasp, reach out for 
that certainty, only to have it evade her, to have it 
submerged in great waves of sleep. . . . She strug¬ 
gled to recall what it was that needed remembering, 
what it was that was gone. . . . Nothing remained 
but the face of the doctor, thrust forward, still and 
absorbed. Suddenly it was jerked away and she 
sank down, down, into sleep ... for hours. 

She woke again. It was dark. The windows 
showed, black squares, save one, where the lamp was 
reflected, seeming to burn steadily and brightly both 
within the house and without. The doctor had not 
moved. “How long have I slept?” 

“About three minutes.” 


286 


THE TIDE 


“Oh.” 

Then she remembered. Flagg was gone. She would 
never again feel his arm beneath her head, the tight¬ 
ening of the muscles in his shoulder, the weight of his 
sleeping body against hers. 

She sat up. And instantly the doctor got to his feet. 
“I’ll make coffee. Wait. Don’t move.” 

He was gone. What a strange man. What did 
he think of her? Whom did he imagine her to be? 
Would he question her? What would happen, now? 

She went to a mirror and stared at herself, sur¬ 
prised to discover that she was the identical Lilah; 
again, she sensed a peculiar, penetrating delight in 
the witty outlines of her nose. . . . 

Strange, that in moments of tremendous meaning, 
meaningless things demanded attention. She was 
more aware of the things in the room—chairs, tables, 
ornaments—than of the body upstairs. The chairs 
were somehow strange and terrible at that hour— 
they were like listening people, spying people, ready 
to say in sharp, unnatural voices that it was late— 
turn out the lights ... let us sleep, let us dream 
in the shadows, our dark, mysterious dreams. . . . 


XII 


T HE days that followed were too crowded to 
hurt very much. A procession of strangers 
came to the “Villino Sans-Souci”; Lilah was 
questioned, with respect, with pity, with impudence, 
with disdain. She discovered that she knew nothing 
of Flagg’s family, his affairs. Cables were dispatched 
to his bank and, after a delay, a dry, unemotional 
and explicit reply was received, not by Lilah, but by 
the Florentine bank which had handled the small 
matter of Flagg’s account. Lilah was visited by an 
Anglo-Italian who wore a white Imperial in the flam¬ 
boyant manner of Maximilian and who gesticulated 
with small, self-conscious hands in black kid gloves. 
She was, he informed her, to leave Flagg in Italy, 
since there was no one to receive him in America. 

“Then I am not to be consulted?” she demanded 
with a smile that should have humiliated him. 

He shrugged his shoulders. “Those were our in¬ 
structions, signora ” He rose and bowed, his eyes 
veiling their curiosity, his attitude a discreet expres¬ 
sion of admiration. “We are also instructed to meet 
any expense—any necessary expense.” 

“I suppose you mean that I am to get back to 
America any way I can.” 

“I suggest that you wire your own bank, signora ” 
287 


288 THE TIDE 

“Oh, yes,” she said crisply. “Of course! I was 
not referring to money but to the indifference of Mr. 
Flagg’s family.” 

Those little, initiated, trained hands made a gesture 
disposing of families. “The world is cruel, signora. 
If there is anything I can do for you, call upon me. 

I am not indifferent to distress. Permit me to say 
that I am more than sorry—” 

When he was gone, she wandered from room to 
room, from window to window, peering out at the 
black sky, at the drenched cypresses, the bedraggled 
arbor. The little cat asked to be let in. “I must find 
a home for you,” Lilah said. Because, like Lilah, 
the little cat loved soft and beautiful things, she was 
forever crying at closed doors, begging to be let in 
to warmth and light. But no one cared, because it 
is not enough to love soft things, beauty— 

The house-agent, rattling his keys, interrupted her. 
He had an air of relishing the situation and there was, 
at the same time, something sly and insinuating in his 
manner. He stared, immediately, at everything as 
if he expected to find that some of the furniture had 
been removed. He asked whether Lilah intended to 
remain at the “Villino Sans-Souci,” which had been 
leased by the “poor gentleman” for a year. 

Lilah realized, with a shock of positive terror, that 
she must leave the house at once. 

“An English gentleman is most anxious to take the 
house. Perhaps, next week—to be precise, Wednes¬ 
day—the signora will surrender the property?” 
Afraid of his eyes, Lilah said: “I cannot move be- 


THE TIDE 289 

fore the first of the month. The rent is paid until 
then.” 

This was a mistake. The agent repeated that his 
English client must take possession at once—or find 
another, suitable house. It was not a simple matter 
to find tenants for houses in the country, the forestieri 
preferred, as a rule, the life and gayety of the city. 
“As for me, signora, I would die of the melancholy 
in this place.” 

“Wednesday, then,” Lilah said. She shut him out 
with a weary gesture. 

Where on earth should she go? Now, of course, 
she could not ask Robert, or Junius, for money. She 
had burned her bridges. 

She packed Flagg’s things, vaguely intending to 
give them to some one who might need them—the 
farmer next door or that tall idiot boy who lived over 
the hill, the one who could imitate the birds and sat 
all day calling them, delighted by his own cleverness. 
Lilah could not kiss Flagg’s things, or caress them. 
Some women might have, but they would not have 
been the kind of women who love deeply. Lilah shook 
his clothes out, folded them, with a sort of frozen 
indifference, as if they had belonged to some one else. 
She had had her hour of bravery, alone with him. 
She had sat with death. No one, not even David Bren¬ 
ner, could call her a coward now. ... But at the 
end, Flagg’s eyes shut her out. He had gone away 
without her, still cherishing his secrets. . . . Self¬ 
ish. . . . The word rang in her ears. 

She got up, went quickly downstairs and to his 


2 9 o THE TIDE 

desk where that little heap of manuscript lay un¬ 
touched. She began to read eagerly, hearing his 
voice in every word. . . . How long would it be 
before she would forget his voice? How long must 
she suffer like this? 

She could not understand what he had written. . . . 
No wonder that he had never confided in her. He 
had either gone infinitely further along the paths she 
feared and shrank from, or else he had been deluded, 
blinded by glimpses of the infinite. His phrases had 
no meaning for her. How far must she go, she won¬ 
dered, before she could judge, appraise him? She 
would know, some day, whether he had been selfish, 
or beyond the proscribed, essential personality of the 
unenlightened being—Robert, Junius, herself. 

She had deceived him, in the beginning; he had 
thought that he saw in her what, eventually, he found 
she did not have. He had little by little uncovered 
her artifice, her ignorance, her evasions, her frivolity, 
her fear, until in the end, he clasped, perhaps with 
shame, a naked little body. . . . That was why, in 
the end, he smiled at her and shut her out. . . . 

Hearing a carriage, she thrust the papers under a 
blotter, out of sight, as if they had been a proclama¬ 
tion of her failure. The servant came in, announc¬ 
ing the contessa. 

“Cara mia, I have just heard.” 

She offered both her hands to Lilah. She was dressed 
in the extreme of fashion, and Lilah thought: “She 
must have made a match.” 


THE TIDE 291 

The contessa’s sharp, initiated eyes studied Lilah’s 
face through a lorgnon. She wore, always, too many 
ornaments, chains, bracelets, medallions and pins; her 
flat breast was hung with brilliants. “My poor child. 
I hear that you were in Paris. What a terrible thing. 
What will you do? Go back to your husband?” 

“No.” 

“Perhaps you will remarry.” 

“My dear contessa,” Lilah said impatiently, “I am 
not yet divorced. And I loved the man who is dead.” 

“But you’ll have to do something with your life 
You can’t live here, alone, in this treasure-house of 
sweet memories! You’ll have to do something! 
You’re young. I don’t believe in women sitting deso¬ 
late among the ruins, willfully mourning the irrevoc¬ 
able. Life is so terribly short and cruel, so—so 
avaricious. I have always believed in snapping my 
fingers in the face of destiny. You couldn’t imagine 
the number of times I’ve been knocked down. I 
always get up again. I’m clever. A woman alone 
has to be. You’ve got to understand men. If I were 
beautiful, with my knowledge of men, I could achieve 
anything. ... As it is—sixty, and a bag of bones— 
I manage—” Her voice trailed off. A look of weari¬ 
ness and fright crossed her eyes. “I manage. Now, 
if I were you—” 

“I haven’t a cent,” Lilah cried suddenly. “I don’t 
know what to do. Can you lend me a few hundred 
dollars?” 

The contessa closed her lorgnon with a snap. Her 
expression became sly, sweet, and guarded. She stared 


292 THE TIDE 

down at her large, awkward hands, at the glitter of 
small, inexpensive but ostentatious rings which orna¬ 
mented her fingers. She shook her head. “Impossible. 
Just at the moment, I am what we Americans call 
flush. But you never can tell. . . . You never can 
tell! It’s a precarious world. And the Italians aren’t 
gifted with a sense of gratitude. I did wonderful 
things for a borghese, a store-keeper, who wanted to 
enlarge his establishment . . 

She broke off. “You might live with me for a 
while. I would enjoy your companionship. Your pres¬ 
ence would brighten my salon. I am quite in earnest. 

I would not expect compensation. Gayety. Vivacity. 
Elegance. And in return the advantage of my large 
acquaintance. . . .” 

“Thank you,” Lilah said. “No.” 

She shivered. “No. You are very kind. But I am 
going back to America.” 

She stood, and the contessa , her chains and bangles 
clinking together, took her leave. “You are very fool¬ 
ish,” she said at the door. “Perhaps you will recon¬ 
sider. You are intelligent enough to know that I am 
respectable. If you are afraid of facts . . . She 
got into her carriage, crossed one leg over the other, 
displaying an elaborate slipper, and waved. Au 
’voir!” 

Lilah thought: “Who knows? Some day.” 

She sat before the fire, smoking and stroking the 
cat, that kept up a remote humming, a sort of tea- 


THE TIDE 293 

kettle purring. She thought of the simple existence 
of a cat. Either you were hungry and hunted, or 
you weren’t, and purred, with no thought of the next 
day or the next. If she were to leave the little black 
cat to the mercy of the agent, the birds in the cypress 
groves would have to watch out—a lean, famished little 
cat with lashing tail would creep through the under¬ 
brush, stalking. . . . “I’ll give you to the doctor,” 
Lilah said aloud. The little cat blinked and fell asleep. 

Life wasn’t so simple for a woman whose only talent 
was knowing how to dress well. To live. Just to 
live, and not be hungry! Suppose she were to accept 
the contessa’s invitation. She knew quite well what 
it meant—a married woman, in Italy—even a divorcee 
would find it almost impossible to remarry. She 
would become the mistress of one of the contessa’s 
friends, for a compensation. He would, of necessity, 
be a wealthy borghese, since men of title were seek¬ 
ing dowries, not adventures. She let the projected 
image of herself pass across her imagination, an image 
of Lilah accentuated, for the moment more brilliant, 
her mystery understored, her charm deepened by ne¬ 
cessity to a certain vulgarity—an actress pretending 
to be a lady. . . . She would seek satisfaction in 
the possession of concrete adornments, tributes to her 
first, untarnished success. She might, even, take her 
situation seriously. . . . 

She threw her cigarette into the fire with a gesture 
that was both violent and contemptuous. First her 
father, now Flagg, had left her to shift for herself. 


294 THE TIDE 

Her mouth drooped. Her eyes, angry, dull with pain, 
brooded. “I can’t bear this. What, in God’s name, 
am I going to do?” 

It was not yet dark. Twilight was gathering, and 
the ugly, incongruous objects in the room retreated 
into shadow. She thought of the Thirty-eighth Street 
house, Shawhan’s flamboyant ladies, the dull gold of 
shaded lights, the discreet, remote murmur of traffic 
in that brazen, that fearless, that challenging city. . . . 
She went to the window. The valley, Florence, was 
dark beneath a dark sky; there were no lights; it 
might have been a city forgotten and deserted, a place 
given over to the ghosts of a reckless, fearless, chal¬ 
lenging yesterday. 

“I must go back,” she thought. 

She straightened herself, as if she were facing an 
antagonist. Across the valley, beneath that dark sky, 
Flagg was alone with the secret he had withheld from 
her. It seemed to Lilah that she must, somehow, get 
to him, hear his voice, listen again to the beating of 
his heart, caress his hair. But there was something 
she must do first. She must bring him the Lilah he 
wanted. 

Doctor Bacci lived across the river in an old house, 
narrow, tall, toppling, in the Via dei Bardi. There 
was a garden at the rear, where, he assured her, the 
little black cat and her kitten would be free to caper 
or to bask in the sun. He opened the hat-box Lilah 
had brought from the Ponte a Mensola, from which 
emerged a continuous scratching and mewing. Damp 


THE TIDE 295 

and disheveled, the two cats jumped out and began 
at once to investigate, under tables, behind doors, 
into cupboards, everywhere. 

"You’re sure you don’t mind?” 

The doctor smiled. “I am, on the contrary, flat¬ 
tered.” 

He touched a bell and a man servant came in. 
The doctor said in Italian: "These are my two chil¬ 
dren. The little, black female is called Simonetta. 
The other, Moro. Will you ask Tata to feed them?” 

“Si, signore” 

He turned to find Lilah in tears. "Now, there is 
nothing,” she said. 

"You have forgotten the future.” 

With a flash of scorn, she answered: "What cold 
comfort!” 

"I have nothing better to offer.” The doctor looked 
away from her, through the French door to the patch 
of garden. Lilah wondered whether pity embarrassed 
him. "What are you going to do?” he asked. 

She told him, at once, her situation. "There is 
no one else I can go to. I’m alone. I don’t want my 
husband or his grandfather to know anything about 
me. I am afraid that if I should see them I might 
weaken. I might go back. I have told you enough 
about myself to make it plain to you that if I should 
go back it would be—” 

"Unthinkable,” the doctor interrupted. 

He rose politely. "There are a few patients— 
When I have seen them, I will join you in the gar¬ 
den.” 


296 THE TIDE 

He opened the door and Lilah passed him, con¬ 
scious of his glance, both curious and eager. Before 
the door closed again, he watched her cross the gar¬ 
den and seat herself on a stone bench beneath the 
polished foliage of a camelia tree. There, in that 
square pool of green, at the bottom of a well formed 
by the walls of houses, beneath another square of 
cloudless sky, Lilah felt a pervading loneliness. An 
emotional courage had carried her so far. Could 
she go farther? Everything, literally everything, de¬ 
pended on this man. If he should open the door and 
come toward her with a certain expression, she would 
know that she was to be forever the victim of her 
negative philosophy; her vision could not outlast the 
attack of a calculated and intelligent cynicism. Her 
balance was too precarious. If he came toward her 
with another expression—and she could tell, when he 
had no more than opened the door—she would be 
forever under obligation to her new self. There could 
be no backsliding. 

She relaxed suddenly. The sunlight, after so many 
weeks of rain, had about it an almost personal warmth; 
it lay across her hands, her cheek, her shoulders. The 
walls dripped moisture and a shallow fountain kept up 
a thin tinkle as a jet rose and fell. A door opened, 
some one said “Via!” and the two cats scampered 
out, their tails very stiff. They sat down in a patch 
of sunlight and began to lick themselves, first their 
haunches, then their stomachs, and at last their heads, 
over and over with their paws. Finished, one of them 
fell asleep, his paws tucked under so that he was 


THE TIDE 


297 

heart-shaped. The other, Simonetta, explored the gar¬ 
den, daintily, stepping over everything lightly, her 
tail twitching. . . . 

“She has forgotten him already,” Lilah thought. 
And she remembered Flagg’s fingers caressing the 
black fur. . . . Her own hair. ... A wild sweet¬ 
ness possessed her. She closed her eyes, abandoned 
to it. It flowed over her like light, this remember¬ 
ing. It was bitter and wonderful and exquisite. If 
she could remember like this, she would never be 
altogether alone; she could summon the recollection 
of his touch. . . . 

The sensation passed. She was cold. She opened 
her eyes to the bright immobility of the garden. 

The French doors of the doctor’s office opened. 
He came toward her quickly, but she did not look at 
his face. 

He said without preface: “I will see that you get 
back to New York and that you are provided for 
until you can find something to do. Florence isn’t 
the place for you. Here you would never reach the 
final step—purification. It is too old, too settled a 
beauty. You need the struggle America offers— 
competition, enthusiasm. I could show you an Italy 
you don’t dream of, but it is mine, not yours! You 
would never understand it and, in the end, it would 
destroy you, since you are weakened by perfection. 
You will have to cut your way out of ugliness.” He 
paused. Then in a different, casual voice he said: 
“Simonetta has come to stay. She is asleep on the 
kitchen step.” And he called: “Vieni! Gattinino!” 


298 THE TIDE 

Lilah returned to New York. It was Spring of 
the year. She mingled in the restless stream flowing 
up one side of the Avenue, down the other, broken by 
cross-currents, flowing on again, resistlessly, to no 

purpose. . 

The doctor’s generosity had been limited by his 
resources; he was not, in the American sense, well- 
to-do. When Lilah counted her pennies and consid¬ 
ered her debt, she realized that he had spoken the 
truth; she must cut her way out of ugliness. Poverty 
in a cottage might be, at least, picturesque, imma¬ 
terial; in New York it was ponderable, a sordid weight 
of petty obstacles; so much for so much and never 
quite enough. 

Lilah established herself in a room not far from 
Astor Place. 

New York was a desert. She was alone in a crowded 
wilderness. She was shabby, in debt and desperate. 
But if Robert had reappeared and had asked her to 
return to the Thirty-eighth Street house, to the sump¬ 
tuous, familiar extravagances of her life there, she 
would have lacked the courage to accept. 

She had a new thirst for power, a new eagerness 
to escape. She wanted the power that comes with 
personal success. She wanted to escape from the curse 
of materialism. She had lived in a sham world; the 
shabby, dark room, the dingy window-panes, the worn 
carpet were reality. 

Lilah’s daily search for work took her through 
streets where there was not even a remote chance 
of being recognized by old friends; she threaded the 



THE TIDE 299 

crowded mazes of commerce, anonymous and fright¬ 
ened. 

It did not occur to her to go back to the fashion¬ 
able couturier in the ’Fifties who had “built” her 
trousseau. She remembered his first curt dismissal, 
the card tossed to her across his desk. “Learn to 
put hats together; then, perhaps, you can design 
them.” 

She avoided those up-town streets given over to 
fashionable shops and hotels, establishments haunted 
by women of her acquaintance whose whims carried 
them from one dressmaker to another, from one anti¬ 
quarian to another. She wanted to lose herself, to 
be immersed in an unfamiliar atmosphere, to be alone 
with this strange, new Lilah. Now that Flagg was 
dead, he was more than ever real. He had never 
been so insistently near her, more insistently a part of 
her. But their life together had lost all reality. It 
seemed, now, to have happened in a half-forgotten 
dream. She had dreamed and had wakened to the 
commonplace business of living. The actual became 
confused with the vision; she experienced a new, strong 
sense of distaste, almost fear, at the proximity of 
people who might break the comforting nostalgia. 

She saw no one but David Brenner. The young 
Jew fitted her mood. He was not, now, in love with 
her but with some scheme of his own. He called her 
his “little sardine” but he did not accuse her of 
being a humbug. 

She lunched with him at the identical restaurant of 
their last meeting, and Lilah traced with her finger 


3 oo THE TIDE 

recent signatures scratched in the pine table by un¬ 
knowns craving an easy notoriety. 

David Brenner’s talk was of people, things, she 
knew nothing about. A dozen personalities had flashed 
across the American intellectual firmament trailing 
sparks and shedding inhibitions rockets, most o 
them, that shot up with a tremendous dazzle and were 
destined soon to snuff out, to zig-zag to earth. David 
Brenner spoke of them with immense seriousness. He 
was like most Americans, she decided, in his facile 
enthusiasms, his sudden, scornful shifts of opinion. 
“I’m broke, David,” she said. 

He did not take her seriously. He knew nothing 
about her. And behind his bantering admiration there 
was always distrust. When she told him that she 
could not find work, he shrugged his shoulders. 
“You’ll never get the sort of job you’re looking for, 
Lilah. Try Fifth Avenue and your own particular 
brand of bluff.” 

There it was again. Her own particular brand ot 

bluff. j 

It was lonely, living by herself. She left David 
Brenner and went back to the room just off Astor 
Place. Day after day at five o’clock she went there 
because there was nowhere else to go. She had lost 
her sense of the pageantry of the streets and of her 
part in it. No one turned to look at her, because 
she no longer had the assurance, the air of victory, 
which attracts attention. 

She took David Brenner’s advice. After all, what 
did it matter if Robert’s friends should happen to 


THE TIDE 


301 

see her? She had been stupid. She was not the 
type of woman they wanted in East Side shirtwaist 
factories. Over and over again she had failed because 
she had had no “experience,” that vague attribute of 
anemic, gum-chewing, bobbed girls who always “got 
the job” Lilah failed to get. Her manner, her charm 
counted for nothing. She discovered that she was too 
old to serve the necessary apprenticeship. Girls of 
fifteen were doing, efficiently, what she could not do. 
Others, thousands of them, were trained, ready to 
take the succeeding steps toward the few high-salaried 
positions available to women in business. At eight 
o’clock, at five o’clock, the streets were choked with 
women, all of them initiated— 

Lilah sat before her mirror and took stock of her¬ 
self. 

“Twenty-nine,” she said aloud. 

In the fashionable world she had left, twenty-nine 
was at the beginning of experience. At thirty, a 
woman tried her wings; if she were clever and am¬ 
bitious, it was the age of marital re-adjustment, of 
social expansion, of thrilling experiment, leadership. 
But to be a lonely little nobody at thirty! To climb 
endless iron stairs to innumerable glazed doors 
marked: Private. To answer advertisements a day 
too late. To be told to leave her name and address, 
to come again, to telephone, to write. To thread the 
crowded streets, pretending eagerness. To try and 
fail . . . 

It would be easier to write Robert something eva¬ 
sive, something pathetic . . . she could always touch 


302 THE TIDE 

his heart . . . and, to-morrow, she would be at the 

Point, laughing with Junius, everything forgotten. . . . 

She actually went to the table and took up a pen, 
dipping it several times in the ink. She wrote: March 
jo . But she could not write: Dear Robert . Could 
not. The letters would not go down. 

She put her head on the paper and cried. She 
cried until she fell asleep. She was very tired and 
she was beginning to be hungry. The doctor’s loan 
would not carry her another week and she could not 
ask him for more. It was enough that he was caring 
for Simonetta and Moro. ... It was enough that 
he had seen Flagg die. . . . 

In the morning she went up town. Someone, very 
optimistic, had set out English daisies in window boxes. 
It was warm on the sunny side of the street. And 
what shops! What clothes! Lilah, drunk, paused to 
stare at a chinchilla wrap, a Leghorn hat, a pair of 
brocaded sandals, a fan made of pheasants’ feathers 
set in onyx sticks. . . . She felt the old hunger for 
possession. She shook her head and straightened her 
shoulders. She groped for her dim, new faith, what 
it was that drove her on, why it was that she must 
win this obscure, personal game. . . . 

She went into the employee’s entrance of a depart¬ 
ment store. A doorman, who was sitting on a stool, 
directed her to the office of “Miss Craig—she sees 
everybody.” Miss Craig was young, and a lady. 
From behind spectacles with tortoise-shell rims 
her eyes investigated Lilah’s unmistakable elegance. 
Maurice’s black gown was a miracle of simplicity; 


THE TIDE 303 

it had outlasted two seasons. Miss Craig wrote some¬ 
thing on a pad. Her expression was purposefully 
enigmatic, but the corners of her mouth twitched. 
“There isn’t much chance just at present. ... I 
could try you in the cotton good’s department. It’s 
quite hard. You’d have to learn the stock. The 
material isn’t heavy, but the bolts are—it means lift¬ 
ing all day and standing on your feet. Our employees 
are expected to go to school in the beginning. We 
have to be sure that they are reasonably good mathe¬ 
maticians—honest—intelligent—” She paused, flush¬ 
ing. 

“Anything,” Lilah said. “I’ll do anything. I’m 
at the end.” 

After a moment, Miss Craig said: “I’m terribly 
sorry. I guessed as much. Would twenty-five dol¬ 
lars a week help any? I can’t offer you more. For 
a novice, you know—” 

“Yes. Yes. Anything.” 

Lilah went to school. Fractions terrified her. 
Graduated, she pasted labels, and, for a week, wrote 
undecipherable, meaningless numbers and letters on 
pasteboard tickets. She did not see Miss Craig again. 
She learned of the men “higher up”; the floor-walkers, 
department managers, buyers and sales managers who 
dominated this world of workers. She encountered 
the “politics” of a big store. She heard gossip, the 
bitter, querulous backbiting of tired women. 

The day came when, with a sense of dread and 
excitement, she was put “on the floor.” All day she 
lifted heavy rolls of gingham, muslin, cotton, crepe, 


THE TIDE 


304 

twisted them, measured them, rolled them up again. 
Pink. Yellow. Hideous checks and nauseating plaids. 
Pretty, crisp organdies, like the starched skirts of lit¬ 
tle girls at a picnic. . . . 

All day she was questioned, bullied, scolded. She 
passed close to the other clerks, brushed them with 
her own body and yet never saw them. This was not 
Lilah. This was a common, clever, indifferent girl 
who was rolling and unrolling cotton goods. “How 
many yards, madam?” That was not Lilah’s voice; 
it was too high and sharp; the accent too clipped. . . . 
Once she thrust her pencil through her hair, and some¬ 
thing apart from Lilah laughed. Junius had said, that 
she was an actress. . . . “Two sixty-four. At one 
thirty-two a yard. Anything else?” 

A young girl with a broad face and gray eyes said: 
“Say, you can’t wear that dress. Mr. Mansfield will 
get after you. It has to be plain black, and no 
frills.” 

Twenty-five a week was not enough. Lilah left the 
room near Astor Place and moved to Tenth Street. 
An old house, the house of a merchant of the ’Eighties, 
had resisted the tide of factories and sweatshops. It 
stood, peeling, cracked and damp, between two tower¬ 
ing buildings occupied by fur manufacturers and 
printers. A smell of hides dominated, indoors and 
out of doors. Packing cases littered the sidewalks 
and trucks stood wheel to wheel for blocks. Spring, 
a hint of sunlight, brought out an army of workers. 
Before the aquiline fagade of the old house a poly- 


THE TIDE 


305 

glot crowd lock-stepped, making wide gestures and 
speaking the dim languages of southeastern Europe. 
At night, the street was deserted. 

Lilah’s room, three flights up, faced a courtyard 
which must have been, in the old days, a formal gar¬ 
den. Now, in a litter of boxes, cans and barrels, a 
lilac tree fought to live. Lilah recalled the cypresses 
of Vincigliata. 

She had lost the last vestiges of her hard brightness, 
her security. 

She lunched every day with the young girl who 
had warned her not to wear the Maurice dress, that 
conspicuous miracle of simplicity. And painstakingly, 
as if everything depended on it, Lilah acquired from 
this girl a new standard of judgment based on the un¬ 
palatable facts of life. She was surprised at her own 
flexibility. But something unalterable, fixed, in her 
nature demanded achievement, justification. There 
would be, must be, a way out. . . . 

Summer was stifling; the city seemed closed be¬ 
neath a dome of steel, its reverberations intensified, 
the air was thick and hot. 

In the store, a few limp and wilted shoppers wan¬ 
dered aimlessly about, but there was so little business 
that, it was rumored, some of the sales force would 
be dropped. Lilah knew the daily panic which comes 
of uncertainty. Her record was not good; she had 
never reached the average sales required to justify 
her presence in the shop, her salary, which was, after 
all, percentage on an investment. The other clerks 
were sharper; they had the tenacity of women born 


3 o6 THE TIDE 

in poverty. Her instinctive mental attitudes, beyond 
their comprehension, made competition, playing the 
game on their terms, impossible. 

She was not surprised when Miss Craig sent for 
her. 

“Pm sorry. We’re letting fifty people go. There’s 
no business.” 

“And I’m one of the fifty?” 

“Yes.” Miss Craig looked away, as if Lilah’s ex¬ 
pression hurt her. “It isn’t me, Mrs. Peabody. I 
don’t decide these things. I’m told that fifty must 
go. I look through the averages—” 

“Like the massacre at Dinard,” Lilah said. She 
felt cold and stiff and her fingers tingled. 

“Don’t you know any one—” Miss Craig suggested. 

Lilah shook her head. “Don’t worry about me. 
I’ll manage.” 

“I’m sure you will.” Miss Craig was evidently 
relieved. She said brightly: “Why not try the up¬ 
town shops? You don’t belong here. I’ll give you a 
letter to ‘Emilie.’ He’s Irish. He’ll like you.” 

“You are very kind.” 

Lilah knew, now, that there were two phases of 
life—life with illusion and life without it. To exist, 
to reconcile living with life, something must take the 
place of the lost beliefs. There must be faith in the 
abstract promise, the idea, withheld, mysterious and 
penetrating, of immortality. . . . She did what she 
always did, in moments of questioning. Facing her¬ 
self in a mirror she thought: “Flagg would have told 


THE TIDE 


307 

me this, only I wouldn’t have understood. I wasn’t 
ready.” 

She was conscious, too, of an apathy that was new 
to her, an indifference, a shadow of the lassitude which 
comes with a surrender of personality. She shrugged 
the feeling away. She must live. She must take, 
while there was still time, the advantage offered by 
her youth, her charm. “Humbug! Humbug!” she 
said to her reflection. 

She glanced at Miss Craig’s letter addressed to 
the firm of “Emilie.” “Dear Reilly: Mrs. Peabody is 
the rustle of silk in our cotton goods department. 
Have a heart. Edna.” 

Lilah smiled. This letter was so sharp and bright 
and cold, so cocksure. It might mean everything or 
nothing. She wondered how any one—a woman— 
could scratch off a letter like that and give it to an¬ 
other woman who was desperate and friendless. 
“Have a heart!” 

She found “Emilie” on Park Avenue. A small, 
ornate, Venetian house with grilled windows and a 
loggia beneath a tiled roof had been converted into 
an “establishment.” A man in livery opened the heavy 
door and scrutinized the letter. “Mr. Reilly’s busy. 
Come Wednesday at four o’clock.” 

Lilah pushed her way in. “I’ll wait. I’ve got to 
see him. Tell him the letter is from Miss Craig. 
He’ll see me.” 

The man hesitated, turning the letter over and over 
between cotton-gloved fingers. “I’m sorry, but Mr. 
Reilly gave particular orders—” 


3 o8 THE TIDE 

Lilah glanced beyond him. A thin, spry man in 
a cutaway coat was running down a flight of car¬ 
peted stairs, yards of purple chiffon hanging across 
his arm and trailing behind him like the robes of a 
Pharaoh. Lilah’s heart contracted. She was amazed 
to hear herself saying: “Oh, Mr. Reilly!” in a loud, 
confident voice. Inwardly she quaked. She had never 
done such a thing. She had no idea whether or not 
this was the dressmaker. 

He bounded toward her, gathering up the chiffon, 
all the time staring at her as if he intended to take 
a bite out of her. He looked like a very angry fox- 
terrier. 

“Mr. Reilly—” 

“Oh, God.” 

He tripped over the chiffon and threw it on the 
ground. He snatched at the letter, read it, showed 
his teeth and almost growled. “Can’t you wait? I’m 
busy. No. Come upstairs. I’ll let you help. Bring 
this stuff, Fred.” 

While they mounted the stairs, Reilly running just 
ahead, his patent shoes and white gaiters twinkling, he 
carried on an irritable monologue. “Everyone’s sick. 
Mrs. Mason went to Lake George this morning. 
I’m short-handed. Twenty-five models came on the 
Olympic yesterday and they’ve got to be photographed. 
If you can wear hats you can go over to the studio 
with Duncan and he’ll get the collection.” 

“I’m not a model,” Lilah interrupted. 

He turned sharply and surveyed her. She felt that 



THE TIDE 309 

he could see more than it was decent for any stranger 
to see—he could see her crouching within herself, 
afraid of hunger. “We’ll try.” He kicked open a 
door and she followed him into a room paneled from 
floor to ceiling with mirrors. She encountered her¬ 
self, little, with scared eyes, profile, three-quarters, her 
back turned, face to face. She raised her hand and 
a dozen images of herself all raised their hands in 
a sort of salute. 

The floor was littered with packing cases from 
which spilled tissue paper and hats. “We’ll try,” 
Reilly repeated. He swooped down, growled, came 
up with a bonnet. Lilah understood that she was 
to remove her own hat and assume this fashionable 
coal-scuttle, this modern, French adaptation of a mode 
seventy-five years old. “My dress is wrong,” she 
said. The challenge excited her. She felt, suddenly, 
re-animated, alive, after a period of stillness. 

Reilly said: “Never mind. You have a charming 
head.” 

She bent her head quickly and looked up at her¬ 
self. 

“Very good. Now, this one.” He swooped again. 
Lilah had never seen such a flexible human being; 
he seemed not to have any bones. “Don’t wear it too 
far forward. These hats need eyes. . . . Too violent 
for you. You’re pale. . . .” He made a vague ges¬ 
ture. “Paisley. Amber. Blonde lace. Pink net and 
camelias, . . . Ah!” He emerged from a heap of 
tissue-paper with a small cloche. “Try this.” 


3 io THE TIDE 

A dozen Lilahs adjusted the expensive trifle of straw, 
a hat magnificently disdainful, unornamented, copy¬ 
righted by an astute and talented milliner. 

“Ell call Duncan.” 

Reilly disappeared and Lilah was left alone with 
the manifold reflection of herself. 

Well, it was over, now. She had known from the 
beginning that she could not escape— 

Reilly returned with a stout, breathless man in an 
alpaca coat who wore a straw hat pushed back. 

After a brief inspection, wholly impersonal, he 
said: “Too blonde. She’d photygraph like a white 
mouse.” 

Reilly waved him out again. The sense, the im¬ 
plication of the photographer’s remark was clear. 
Lilah removed the cloche and tossed it aside. She 
groped for her own hat. “Don’t go,” Reilly inter¬ 
rupted sharply. “Wait. You can take Katherine’s 
place—” 

He beckoned to her. 

The front of the house, from basement to loggia, was 
given over to salesrooms, luxurious, miniature shops 
designed to attract and hold devotees at the shrine of 
that elusive deity, the mode. Reilly was an astute 
priest. He had capitalized his serious interest in 
women; he was unaware of his own incongruity. 
Sharp, alert, inexhaustible, he worshipped women and 
exacted payment from them—he “burned incense and 
passed the plate” he told Lilah. Something effeminate 
in his gesture, the use of his hands, was contradicted 
by the shrewdness of his eyes. 


THE TIDE 311 

He preceded Lilah into a room furnished in the 
Venetian manner, dimly lighted, opening upon the 
loggia. Through the delicate, turned columns, a pris¬ 
matic confusion of vertical stone shafts picketed the 
smoky sky—the city. A girl rose from a bench, ap¬ 
proached with the languid gait of the trained man¬ 
nequin. “Duncan wants you. This is Mrs. Peabody. 
She’ll take your place.” 

Reilly turned. “There’s no business at this time 
of year. But if any one should come in, sell! The 
hats are in these cases. Use your own judgment and 
get as much as you can for them. Nothing under 
thirty-five dollars. Poor models, more. Good models, 
less. That’s excellent psychology. A woman who 
pays fifty dollars for an ugly hat will wear it to spite 
the devil, and she’ll like it, in spite of herself. A 
woman who gets a beautiful hat for thirty-five dol¬ 
lars will advertise it—and us!” 

He sat down, clasped his knees and asked abruptly: 
“Who are you? Not Mrs. Robert Peabody?” 

“Yes.” 

“Don’t tell any one! Call yourself Mrs. Isaac 
Peabody—anything! If you stay here, you are not 
likely to meet your friends. I cater to actresses, rich 
middle-westerners and fashionable demi-mondaines. 
They’ll like your looks and your manners. Women 
are always fascinated by the unattainable.” 

“Thank you.” 

“We’ll say thirty to start with. If you make 
good, I’ll give you this department, at seventy-five. 
Katherine is a beautiful bonehead. . . 


He leaped up. ‘Til send a stock-girl. For God’s 
sake don’t ask any questions. Use your common sense 
and sell hats.” 

He stepped forward and with no softening of his 
expression, touched her hair. “That’s a good girl. ’ 

Lilah discovered before long that Reilly was with¬ 
holding the reward, the promise of that first day. Sum¬ 
mer melted into the stifling heat of September and be¬ 
neath a metallic, dark blue sky the city shimmered, 
quivered as if licked by the minute flames of an in¬ 
fernal fire. “My God, it’s hot,” the stately Katherine 
remarked. She stood by the open window, in sil¬ 
houette, her attitude reminiscent of Francesca, the 
disdainful melancholy of Duse. “My God, it’s hot. 
Why don’t Reilly close on Saturday?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“I do. He might lose a dollar.” 

Lilah had changed her opinion of Reilly; he paid 
very little attention to her; she had never again had 
to endure that brief, impersonal caress. He had called 
her, without preface of any sort: “Lilah.” And he 
had left her to her own devices. 

She came to the conclusion that Reilly was either 
a fraud or an artist. The room in which he received 
his clients had only one window and three doors, one 
leading into the workroom, one into his bath and the 
other into the “Salotto d’Oro.” His desk bore, in 
addition to an alabaster lamp, stacked copies of La 
Vie Parisienne: a copy, in French of Le Manage de 
Loti; a box made of lacquered leather heavily em- 


THE TIDE 313 

bossed; and a small colored bust in terra-cotta that 
at first glance might have been Florentine but was, 
actually, Egyptian. Behind him, in an angle of the 
wall, a secretary of inlaid wood towered almost to 
the ceiling. There were three Venetian chairs, ornate 
and faded. And hung together above a small cabinet, 
signed photographs of Ibanez, Poiret, Chaliapin and 
Nora Bayes. 

Lilah found that Reilly was a man of violent en¬ 
thusiasms. His interest in her had been immediate, 
sharp; he had, perhaps, been studying her. There 
was a certain zest in competing for his attention, since 
he had indicated in the beginning, a definite award. 
Lilah held aloof from the other women of the estab¬ 
lishment, because Reilly had warned her that she 
could expect jealousy, and that she must avoid con¬ 
flict if she expected to advance. Her ambition was 
trivial. But faith in herself, her potentiality, returned 
slowly. She was humble and, in her recollection of 
Flagg, disciplined. As the actuality of that experience 
receded, its meaning became more clear. 

Katherine, stretching her long arms above her head, 
yawned. “I could stand the present if it wasn’t for 
the future,” she said. “Waiting’s hell when nothing 
happens.” 

She caught herself as the mirror-paneled door of the 
elevator slid back and two women stepped into the 
room. “B* jour , mesdames” she murmured; her body 
undulated; she swam toward them. 

Lilah’s expression of polite concern deepened into 
surprise, dismay. She recognized Grace Whiteside, 


3 i 4 THE TIDE 

fat, over-ornamented, placid in the secure possession 
of family and position, and, behind her, Miss Fuller, 
as always, in gray with a little pan-cake hat made 
of leaves. 

Lilah held up her hand to ward off their recognition. 
Grace Whiteside came to a full stop; she seemed to 
spread, to puff out, like an angry turkey. 

“Don’t,” Lilah said faintly. She turned and ran 
out of the room. 

She waited, leaning against the closed door. She 
heard a murmur of voices, Katherine’s suave and in¬ 
sinuating: “Very chic, madame. Very new. Reboux. 
Just try this one, madame ” 

Presently they were gone. The elevator came up, 
the door rattled; it descended again, making a hollow, 
reverberating sound in the wall. 

Lilah wondered at her own fear; it was not a moral 
cowardice, of that she was certain; she was not 
ashamed. She had a different sense of responsibility 
toward herself and the opinion people had of her. She 
was unwilling to face Miss Whiteside and Grace Fuller 
because she had not, as far as they could see, pro¬ 
gressed; the change that had taken place within her 
was beyond their comprehension. The new self had 
always been there, dormant; but it had been disclosed 
by Flagg’s death, by the questioning which had fol¬ 
lowed. 

Katherine emerged from the “Salotto d’Oro” sud¬ 
denly. Her expression was sly and gratified, as if she 
had caught Lilah in an indiscretion. She passed, with¬ 
out a word, going toward Reilly’s office, the black satin 


THE TIDE 315 

drapery of her skirt slipping over the carpet like a 
smooth serpent. 

Lilah went back to the salesroom. Grace Whiteside 
had been trying on bonnets, Reilly’s rare confections of 
lace and spangles designed for grandmothers of the 
stage. It had been, apparently, a perfunctory inspec¬ 
tion. 

As Lilah put the hats back in their place, she pic¬ 
tured Miss Whiteside rushing to the nearest telegraph 
office to wire Junius Peabody. . . . Grace Fuller would 
probably try to prevent what, in the end, would mean 
her own happiness. But nothing could turn aside the 
fanatical thrusts of the outraged spinister; she would 
plant her vengeance sooner or later. Now, Lilah must 
let herself be divorced; an eventuality which would de¬ 
prive her of her position with Reilly, since the inevita¬ 
ble scandal would affect her usefulness. Reilly was 
beginning to cast in social waters, and he was baiting 
his hook cautiously. He was shrewd but he was not 
sophisticated. His knowledge of society had been de¬ 
rived at second hand. Into his vocabulary the word 
“form” had appeared. He had subjugated the theatri¬ 
cal world and now, longing for other, more difficult at¬ 
tainment, he was angling for what he termed, in a 
whisper, “Newport and Bar Harbor. . . 

Lilah’s mind went off at a tangent; she caught her¬ 
self wondering whether Grace Fuller had been chaper¬ 
oning Robert’s aunt through another attack of gall¬ 
stones, or whether— 

Reilly came in, shutting the door with an irritable 
bang. “What’s this? What’s Katherine trying to put 


3 i6 THE TIDE 

over?” Lilah did not answer and snatching the bon¬ 
net away from her, Reilly tossed it aside. “I hate 
tittle-tattle! She came down stairs, gloating, as if she 
had caught you picking the safe. What happened?” 

With a sense of the futility of any explanation, Lilah 
said: “I lost my head and Katherine lost a sale. . . .” 

“Damn the sale!” 

Reilly stood, wrapped in a sort of angry contempla¬ 
tion, his hands in his pockets, his small, gaitered feet 
spread. “You’d better let me go,” Lilah said. “It 
might happen again.” She added, with a curious smile: 
“I’m sorry, more so than I can say.” 

He fixed his eyes on her face. 

“I’ll let you know,” he answered sharply and left 
the room. 

A week later, he sent for her. 

“I’m going to put you in the workroom. I think you 
have the makings of a designer. Later, perhaps, I’ll 
send you to Paris, Vienna. ... It won’t do to have you 
upstairs.” 

He hesitated and then said sharply: “I’ve heard from 
your family.” 

Lilah had not expected this. She leaned against the 
desk with a feeling of faintness. 

“They’ve written me. One of them—a Mr. Junius 
Peabody—wants to see you.” 

“I can’t! No. . . . For heaven’s sake, no! I don’t 
want to see him.” 

Reilly considered her. “I thought I’d warn you. 
He’s downstairs. There’s his card.” He tossed it 
across the desk. “You’d better see him.” Reilly rose 


THE TIDE 317 

and came around to her; his hand fell on her shoulder. 
“You’re not a coward, are you?” 

“No.” 

“Then face things! If you don’t, they steal up be¬ 
hind you and knock you down. Always keep your eye 
on your fears.” His clasp tightened. “Do you know 
why I hired you? I was afraid of you! I’m not 
familiar with your sort. You made me ashamed of 
what I am. . . . Now, it seems, you are ashamed of 
what you are. . . . Either you’re stubborn or you’re 
guilty. I don’t pretend to understand. I’d like to 
put across to you—well, don’t make a mistake.” 

Lilah smiled, made a gesture of surrender. “I’ll see 
him.” 

“That’s a good girl.” Reilly paused on the thresh¬ 
old. “And listen. Don’t hold out against him be¬ 
cause of any resentment . . . don’t be a damn fool. 
There is more than one way of making good.” 

A moment later, rigid, consciously and painfully cor¬ 
rect, he bowed Junius Peabody into the room and 
closed the door again, softly, as if he were closing it 
upon the sacred essence of good form. 

Lilah faced Junius with a trace of confusion; her 
lips trembled; she smiled unsteadily, because he was 
so unfalteringly Junius in spite of everything. He 
carried his overcoat on his arm; his head, bared, was 
held erect, the white, thick hair brushed carefully back 
from the veined forehead. Immaculate, even exquisite, 
at eighty-seven he still gave the impression of vigorous 
and aristocratic possession. He said: “Lilah,” and, 
leaning forward, she kissed him, clung to him suddenly 


3 i8 THE TIDE 

with a passionate eagerness to be understood. For¬ 
giveness was not required, looked for, since she had 
had to do what she had done. 

She felt his hand, patting, patting her back. “There, 
there ” he said. 

She made an effort and controlled herself, remem¬ 
bering that at Junius’ age emotion is painful and per¬ 
haps ugly. 

He sat down; disposed of his coat, his hat and the 
heavy, goldmounted cane, and glanced about him. “My 
first visit to a dressmaker’s since ’Eighty-six,” he said. 
“They’ve changed. No ribbons here!” He made a 
gesture of dislike. “That fellow—that popinjay—” 

“Emilie,” Lilah said, wiping her eyes. A flash of 
her old self came through, evoked by Junius’ presence. 
But she could not, now, laugh at Reilly. He was her 
destiny. She was forced to admit that without Reilly 
she might be caught in the tide and carried out to sea. 

“He’s really very clever.” 

“A man dressmaker,” Junius stated dryly, “puts me 
on edge. I will never be reconciled—” 

He broke off and scrutinized her. “Well, Lilah.” 

With sudden violence she burst out: “I know! You 
can’t understand why I’ve hidden myself away. I 
had to. You and I are alike, but you’ve never had to 
remake yourself. You still look down on people you 
consider inferior, and I’ve had to learn to respect them. 
I’ve had to kill my old self—or starve.” 

“I have always admired you inordinately,” he re¬ 
marked. 

“But you have never cared—how could you— 


THE TIDE 319 

whether I was being cowardly and selfish, so long as I 
was superior, like you, a snob. We’re both materialists, 
you, because you could afford to be and I because I 
wanted to be. I haven’t changed. I want finished, 
rare, superlative things as much as ever. But I hate 
myself because I am a materialist. And that’s as 
good as changing.” 

“You’ve been unhappy.” 

She turned away. And Junius continued: “You are 
coming back, of course?” 

She shook her head. 

With a trace of impatience, Junius Peabody de¬ 
manded: “Why not? There isn’t any one else—another 
attachment—” Rebuked by her quick glance, he 
apologized: “I know. What you felt was genuine. 
But since it is over, done with—” 

She interrupted: “I wonder if you can understand. 
What happened is as immaterial as a dream. I can’t 
repent. Atone. Do any of the expected things. . . . 
I’m not sorry or ashamed. I am not even, in the ac¬ 
cepted sense, chastened. As you say, it is over. But I 
am different, deep down, out of sight, beyond my 
knowledge. ...” 

She smiled at him. “It’s a mixed-up world. I know, 
now, that it isn’t nasty. . . . We, ourselves, are nasty.” 

“Robert needs you.” 

With a flash of scorn she demanded: “Did he expect 
you to tell me so?” 

Junius shook his head. “Don’t misunderstand. 
Robert hasn’t any illusions. They are all gone. He 
is burned out, Lilah. But I like him better than I ever 


320 THE TIDE 

did when he was moon-struck. I think, at times, he 
hates you because you took away his belief in that 
moon of his. I could have told him that he was wor¬ 
shipping, not a moon but a glow-worm, because, as you 
say, we are very much alike, you and I.” 

“We give a lovely light,” Lilah said. 

The memory of an old appreciation warmed them 
both. The door of the workroom opened suddenly, 
and violently a head was thrust in. “Mr. Reilly, 
here’s that fitting— Oh, excuse me!” The door slammed 
again, shutting out the noisy clatter of machines, the 
snip-snip of scissors, the staccato treble of women’s 
voices. 

Junius rose. 

“We are living very quietly at the Point,” he said. 
“I came down on purpose to see you, talk to you. I 
won’t urge you. After all, what more can I say than 
that you are needed?” 

Lilah cried desperately. “But I don’t love Robert, 
Junius.” 

Junius Peabody faced her, a moment, in silence. 
She noticed that every detail of his dress was correct, 
meticulous; he displayed the interest of a young man 
in the outward semblance of superiority, of pride. 
Something unfamiliar in her nature caused her to re¬ 
coil, almost to resent this deliberate conforming to 
prejudice. . . . Then, as suddenly, she admired him 
for this very tenacity, this unswerving adherence to 
an ideal of behavior, of appearance. He took her hand. 
“There is such a thing as being beyond personal hap¬ 
piness. I hoped that you had learned to do without it. 


THE TIDE 321 

There is no other serenity. . . . You’ll come back?” 
“Perhaps.” 

She covered her face with her hands. 

She saw herself, not in the garden, not in the forest, 
but on the green before the kennels, where Robert’s 
spaniels romped and barked. She saw herself kneeling 
in the grass, fondling a wriggling puppy, stroking and 
kissing the soft fur. She heard herself saying: “Oh, 
Robert, aren’t they darlings!” 


THE END 










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